


Queen of Air

by stitchy



Series: The Matriarchal Star Wars Redux You Always Wanted [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Buddy Cops, Force-Sensitive Finn, Gen, Mission Fic, Phasma is Rey's Mother, Rey POV, Rey and Finn are "Twins"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6184219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a break from Jedi training and after being rejected by her mother a *second* time, Rey takes a diplomatic mission for the Resistance with Finn. Along the way they get the chance to be detectives, heroes, and catch up on being kids! </p><p>Also Rey gets to fly an X-wing, that's always good ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will probably be better read after [The Colloquium](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5886811), a stormpilot-y Finn POV fic that sets up the following need-to-knows:  
> 1) Phasma's a clone of the Emperor.  
> 2) She's also Rey's mom.  
> 3) Even though Rey and the boys broke her out of FO prison, Phasmom is not into this. She maroons them.  
> 4) Finn knows about Phasmom and is being pretty supportive.  
> 5) Also he has kind of Force-y dreams???  
> 6) BB-8's a girl cuz I say so.  
> 7) Zarro is a buddy of Chewie's, and Verlaine is an Alderaanian friend of Leia, both from the comicbooks.
> 
>   
> [art by me! stitchyarts on tumblr ](http://stitchyarts.tumblr.com/tagged/star%20wars)  
> 

     In the deserts of Jakku there was little to obstruct or distract from the view of the burning sunset, but Rey has never witnessed one quite like this before- and there isn’t even a planet beneath her feet. The cusp of Sluis shrinks behind the horizon of the G-9 Orbital Shipyard, casting its final yellow glow along the edges of the ramparts. As the planet below eclipses, small green lights begin to blink on along the speedway, doing their best to illuminate the night.

     Niima Outpost never got this dark, Rey thinks. You could feel folded up by the night here. Smothered, even- like it was snuffing out your breath along with the light. She shakes herself out of the feeling, beckoning BB-8 with a gesture.

     “It shouldn’t be long,” she reassures the droid.

     BB-8 tarries, warbling a nervous note while her domed head slides around, looking in every direction. All around the shipyard, tall, serpentine beings carry out their day, showing very little interest them, even though they’ve stopped in the middle of an intersection. The figure BB-8 keeps watch for does not reappear.

     “Well, _she’s_ not coming back. Don’t worry about it.” Rey starts walking again with purposeful confidence, hoping it will put BB-8 at ease.

     Strange as their geographical surroundings may be, being left behind is familiar territory to Rey. First things first, she had sold Han’s blaster for a few credits at the market. He had understood that surviving the day came first- or else you can’t be sentimental about _anything_. Besides, she has her lightsaber. The money affords her a few rations and a comm booster BB-8 could use to pick up any transmission from the _Millennium Falcon_ , assuming that their distress signal managed to reach friendly ears. BB-8 crowds her heels as they make their way across the spaceport to a dock that could accommodate an offworld freighter, if ever it came to fetch them.

     They just have to hope that crew of the _Falcon_ are at their leisure to come retrieve Rey and BB-8... and Finn and Poe, for that matter- wherever _they_ ended up. They were probably still adrift in space with half a ship and no engines, wondering if Rey and her slightly-more-useful half of the ship had any clue how to locate them before time ran out. She has to assume that her calculations on their position will be enough of a lead to find them. In her head, Rey runs the all the little considerations over and over again; flight time, the interfering mass of the gas giant by the egress, the weight of the shuttle without its cockpit, and-

     “Damn it,” Rey hisses, her heart seizing so painfully she stops in her tracks. If this mistake costs her friends their lives she will never forgive herself. BB-8 hoots in concern. “I didn’t factor for the fuel expenditure. It would have thrown off the weight of the cabin by at least-”

     BB-8 cuts her off in a chatter of beeps, reporting the percentages. The difference in calculated position is small enough that the sensors of a ship like the _Falcon_ should still detect them, she promises. Rey struggles to undo the frown on her face, for BB-8’s benefit. They are all important enough to be _worth_ finding, BB-8 adds.

     “I know that,” Rey smiles, softly. She reaches out to pat BB-8’s optical sensor. “Someone will come for us. Just keep transmitting the beacon.”

     At the dock, they find an out of the way nook to sit in with a good view of the freighter bays. Rey cracks open a capsule of rations and convinces BB-8 to go into power-reserve mode while they wait, on the terms that she will activate BB-8 immediately if Phasma turns up again.

     “I promise,” Rey says very solemnly, though she knows there is no risk of that happening. If Phasma wouldn’t come back for her child who had needed her, why should she come back for the adult who didn’t, and furthermore was affiliated with Phasma’s sworn enemies?

     They have very few assets to trade in exchange for access to a charging port, so as lonely as it is when BB-8’s operation light winks out, Rey knows it would be much lonelier if she went offline entirely. With years of practice, she settles in for the wait.

     Rey could sleep on a rock, and _had_ when she was with Master Luke- but she can’t seem to drift off, tucked into the relative comfort of a corner between BB-8 and a softly humming wall. She twists and turns, bunching up her wrap for a pillow and hoping to get even an hour of relief from wakefulness. Maybe it’s all the strange people coming and going that keeps her wary and lucid, or maybe it’s the worry for her friends. Rey doesn’t have the energy to pin it down. She just wishes she could let them know she was all right, somehow. That she’s determined to come back for them, like Finn came back for her. She finally exhausts herself while wishing it so hard.

     “Hey,” says a gruff, unfamiliar voice. It stirs her awake. “You looking to book passage somewhere?”

     A man with a freckled green stripe from his chin to forehead stands at a respectful distance, peering down at her. Rey sits up, cautious.

     “I have to meet someone before I can leave the system,” she says, truthfully. When she reaches out to sense the man’s feelings, there is no danger there- just a little sadness.

     “Long shot that you’d be headed for the Cerean Reach anyway,” he mumbles with a shrug.

     Rey nods firmly. “There’s not much out that way,” she agrees. It’s closer to Jakku than any planet she’s heard mentioned in a long time, but she wouldn’t go out of her way to defend Jakku as a Somewhere.

     The man bows politely and continues on his way, so Rey checks her chrono to see how long she’d been asleep. Only three hours. She sighs and lets her head drop back on BB-8, surprised by the sudden twitter of beeps. Rey jumps up to inspect if she’s accidentally hit some button on the droid, when the crackle of an incoming transmission erupts with the identifying beeps of the _Millennium Falcon_ ’s call sign.

     “Rey??”

     Her heart could burst! She was expecting Chewbacca or Zarro, but this? Her stranded friends were already safe aboard the _Falcon_.

     “Finn? Finn! Oh, Stars- I wasn’t sure if I had the right weight for the shuttle- I didn’t figure for fuel expenditure at all-”

     BB-8 rejoices with a fweep, coming back to life. She attempts to greet Finn before remembering their language barrier.

     “No! You found us just fine,” he says. “We’re coming for you now- what happened?”

     Excited anew, BB-8 beeps again in question.

     “Yes, yes, BB-8, he said ‘us’ and ‘we’, Poe is with him-” Rey confirms, hushing the droid before attempting to parse Finn’s question.

_What happened?_

     “I told her who I was, Finn.”

     At first, Rey had considered keeping it to herself, but she and Phasma were alone for hours, cruising at sublight speed. After years of wondering about her parents, waiting one minute more seemed too long. Master Luke had shared with Rey as much as he knew- how Sheev Phasma, clone of the Emperor was intended to be a rallying point for the remnant of the Empire that was scattered in exile in the Unknown Regions. How she sought out the Jedi when her maturation was not accompanied by the expected Force-sensitivity, and left the Jedi Order for the First when her training failed to awaken it. Master Luke had told her how Sheev had disappeared for several months, returning to the temple one night with an infant, and leaving again before dawn. When she was abandoned _again_ on Jakku, she was promised that it was to meet her mother who was finally returning for her. Rey had had to unlearn that lie, and had since worked very hard not to tell herself more like it.

     “She didn’t want to go back to the First Order, but she wasn’t interested in throwing her lot in with me either.”

     “ _Yet_ ,” Finns says with conviction, and Rey loves him for it. She can move moons, in his opinion, and it makes her feel a bit more certain, too.

     “She left us on a shipyard and sold the engine for the credits to hire a lift out of the system,” Rey finishes explaining.

     BB-8 condemns Phasma with exceedingly colorful language for a droid. Rey can hear Chewbacca laugh, which makes BB-8 rock back and forth in pride. Rey hushes her, so she can hear Finn’s goodbye and answer Chewbacca’s request for their specific location.

     Before the sun rises over the edge of the shipyard again, Rey sees the familiar shape of the _Millennium Falcon_ approach Sluissi air control. She was glad to see it back on Starkiller Base, when she feared having to watch her second death of a friend in one day- but she had been panicked then too. Now, she was full of only joy, and waved enthusiastically while the _Falcon_ landed at the nearest dock.

     From the lowered ramp, Finn appears almost instantly with Chewbacca close behind him. Rey runs across the landing pad to meet them, flinging herself in their open arms.

     “Oh thank you, thank goodness!” she cries, accepting their worried affection and returning it anxiously.

     Chewbacca howls a teasing scold for getting mixed up with First Order types. Doesn’t she know better?

     BB-8 charges up beside her, knocking Finn in the knees and blurting in frenzy.

     Rey steadies them both and and holds out a calming hand toward the droid. “She wants to know that you missed her and if Poe is okay,” she says over the noise. “Loudly.”

     Finn’s face cracks into a wide grin, uncharacteristic to the circumstances in which Poe’s condition was left. “Of course, BB-8! And Poe’s amazing! I mean- he’s still been _shot_. But while we were waiting-” Finn rambles, barely able to finish any one sentence in his excitement, “I mean, we’re keeping him comfortable now, until we can get him to a real medbay, but-” Finn sighs a little dreamily. Chewbacca barks an unneeded explanation.

     “But you got yourself a cute boyfriend?” Rey asks, laughing.

     “I kept busy,” he nods a few times.

     BB-8 chatters her multiple senses of relief.

     “C’mon, see him for yourselves,” Finn says, sweeping his arm in welcome toward the ship. BB-8 shoots off ahead of them.

     Inside, Rey finds Poe in one of the bunks looking pale but alert, his good arm reaching out of the bunk so BB-8 can brush under his hand while chattering away.

     “Poe, you’re all right!” Rey cries, rushing over.

     At the sound of her voice he cranes his head to get a good look at Rey. “It’s harder than that to get rid of me,” Poe laughs, squinting at her. “Is it just my blasterwound, or are you wearing half of a market stall for a cape?”

     “BB-8 had a disagreement with a curtain while we were trying to get our hands on a commlink, and it got chilly waiting for you lot to show up!” Even before Rey had made the discovery of her parentage, she’d known herself to be a bit cold blooded. She draws her wrappings around herself, defensively. The _Millennium Falcon_ is quite a bit cooler than an shipyard populated almost entirely by reptilian aliens, after all.

     “Only our little darling of the desert could get ‘chilly’ on a Sluissi spaceport,” Poe sighs fondly, letting his head drop back to the bunk. “Happy you’re back, Rey.”

     Rey can feel that Poe is putting up a strong front for his friends, still very much in pain. She pats his hand on BB-8’s head and lets him rest, though she’s glad he’s well enough to tease her. BB-8 stays beside him, cooing her contentment to be by her master’s side.

     Back in the cockpit, Rey takes a seat with the rest of her friends. Zarro, Chewbacca’s new copilot, hops out of her seat to offer it to Rey.

     “It’s yours if you want it, kid. I know you and the bird go way back,” says Zarro with a wink of her red eyes.

     Rey isn’t sure how she has any claims of seniority when she turned down Chewbacca’s offer to be the _Falcon’s_ first mate and waves her hands in refusal, but appreciates the gesture all the same.

     “I suspect that someone who’s slept more than three hours in the past two standard days would be better,” Rey laughs and wearily slumps into the bench next to Finn.

     Chewbacca reaches a furry arm back from his seat in front of her and tussles her head, congratulating her on her good sense.

     “Back to D’Qar, then?” Zarro asks, peeking back to make sure everyone is secure for lift-off.

     With a crack about ‘knowing any good bars along the way,’ Chewbacca shifts the controls into thrust.

     “You know, the General is probably going to have to shift the Resistance to a new base soon,” Finn tells Rey. “Maybe we’ll end up somewhere closer to Ahch-To.”

     “If I were the General, I would like to be closer to my brother after being apart so long,” says Rey. She squeezes Finn’s hand with a smile, and he glows a bit, taking her meaning.

     “When is Master Luke expecting you back for more training?”

     “Well, it depends on how his own mission is going,” Rey supposes.

     Finn quirks his head, like he’s trying to imagine the legendary Luke Skywalker reporting to some bureaucratic type like he does when receiving an assignment. “And what is that?”

     “Your guess is as good as mine,” she shrugs, letting her head fall on Finn’s shoulder, yawning. When they get back to the Resistance base she’ll have to get in contact with her master to see where things stand, she decides. Between the warmth of Finn by her side, the unmarked dark of space, and Chewbacca and Zarro’s running commentary on the comparative benefits of the Rimma and Hydian routes she is lulled to sleep before long.

 

     D’Qar is bustling with activity when they make their approach. It looks like some of the squadrons are practicing formation over the jungles and lakes of the planet while a supply freighter unloads a shipment at the Resistance base. Rey leans closer to the windows for a better look. On Jakku, she had once resurrected and managed to sprint a rickety snubfighter within the atmosphere before it completely fell apart, but these X-wings are decades more advanced, dipping in and out of orbit like they’re skipping rope. She can only imagine what such well tuned engines would feel like under her control. Two X-wings pull up alongside the _Falcon_ to provide them with a friendly escort to the surface, curling around them in ostentatious loops while Chewbacca grumbles about young hotshots. Rey tries not to gape too obviously.

     Finn grins over Rey’s shoulder. “I bet if you asked Poe really nicely...”

     “Maybe when he’s feeling better,” she says lightly, as though she wouldn’t jump on the chance immediately. Her imagination flashes the yellow of a pilot’s visor before her eyes while she watches the sky around them, busy with ships.

     “You’re probably right. He’d insist on going up with you for a dogfight.”

     Poe’s voice calls from behind them. “Damn straight. I wanna see what you’ve got.”

     Rey turns in her seat, eyes as wide as her grin. “Promise?”

     “Absolutely,” he says, carefully navigating himself into the turbulent cockpit of the _Falcon_ with his one good arm. He stops behind their seat and bends so his head dips next to Finn’s. “And don’t think you’re off the hook either, buddy. Gonna have to learn to fly sometime,” he grins, very close to Finn’s ear. It’s no different than the way the two had behaved when Rey had last seen them, but now instead of simply basking in Poe’s attention, Finn lets the corner of his mouth knock into Poe’s cheek affectionately.

     “I think I might grab my things from your quarters and stay in the _Falcon_ \- if it’s all right with Chewbacca and Zarro, of course.” As much as she enjoys spending the night with her friends close by, Rey suspects the recent change in their relationship may warrant some privacy.

     “No sweat,” Zarro says with a shrug, and Chewbacca agrees.

     “Oh?” Finn looks at Rey with worry.

     “I wouldn’t want to get underfoot while, uh. You know.” Finn continues to fix her with a look that Does Not Know. “Poe will probably want... some bedrest?”

     Poe clears his throat and shoves his good hand through his hair, while Finn, immune to the chuckles in the cockpit, just nods. “Oh! Well don’t worry about your cot or anything, I’ll haul it back to the quartermaster myself.”

     Once they’ve landed, the crew of the Falcon go to get some refreshments, the boys and BB-8 head to the infirmary, and Rey goes to collect her belongings and get in touch with her master. The first task is easy enough- she has a small pack with a change of clothes and tools that is no trouble to carry around, but she hasn’t a clue where the Resistance hides their public comm suites. During her search, she roams into the hangar where several of the X-wings she had watched do maneuvers earlier are docked.

     Rey can’t resist them, and finds herself gravitating toward the closest ship, reaching up to touch the hull while she wanders the length of it. It’s a T-70, like most of the Resistance fleet, with yellow markings to match the ones on Dosmit Ræh’s helmet that she had salvaged on Jakku, long ago.

     “Can I help you?” A silver-haired head pops into view, hanging down from atop the ship. Rey halts so she doesn’t walk smack into the woman.

     “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Rey apologizes.

     The woman drops down, then shakes out her knees with a little frown, like maybe she’s second guessing the wisdom of somersaulting off of X-wings at her age. She looks to be as old as General Organa- she likely would have been around in the time of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. And there is something familiar about her, but Rey can’t decide if it was just the way the woman dressed her hair in the same twined piles as the General, or maybe-

     “Verlaine,” says the woman, sticking out her gloved hand in greeting and shattering the brief illusion. It had been silly, anyway.

     “Rey.”

     Verlaine shakes her hand firmly. “I flew with one of those in the old Rebellion. Do you have any pilots in your family?”

     Rey shakes her head, but can’t help standing there, fish mouthed. She has never mentioned it to anyone, and only her master knew any differently, but her name is a borrowed invention. Master Luke had named her for his own aunt and raised her alongside the Initiates when she was brought to the temple, but all memory of those years were locked away during the attack. When she was left on Jakku soon after, the promise that her mother was returning for her was the only fact she carried with her from Before. Rey couldn’t even remember who had _made_ that promise. Alone, she scraped and struggled, and scavenging became who she was. It was only natural to name herself for the salvaged helmet when it was the first friendly identity she met.

     After a moment, Rey finds her voice again. “No, but I’ve read all about Dosmit Ræh and her Yellow Aces. I’m guessing you were one of them.”

     The corner of Verlaine’s mouth quirks, impressed. “Now _there’s_ a bit of obscure history.”

     And Rey knew every word of it by heart- everything reported in the databanks of her AT-AT, at any rate.

     Verlaine turns back to her ship a moment and hits the manual release for the co-pilot’s position. A small white and silver R2-series astromech droid lowers from the back of the X-wing, beeping in excitement. A thin black stripe around it’s domed head gives the impression of bemused eyebrows. “Hey Eftoo. This is my friend Rey.”

     The droid beeps a greeting, wondering if Rey is a new pilot for Yellow Squadron.

     “I wish!” Rey laughs. The droid rocks on it’s feet in a shrug and carries on with its post-flight duties. Rey blushes and remembers what she had been looking for in the first place. “Hah, well. I was looking for a comm suite I could use?”

     Verlaine starts off instantly, beckoning her along. “Anything for a fan of the Yellow Aces.”

     Rey follows quickly, trying to keep up with Verlaine’s much longer legs as they make their way out of the hangar and down another corridor of the complex. “Thank you, I need to get in touch with my master.”

     “You mean Luke?” The way Verlaine says his name without compunction is refreshing. To many people Rey’s own age, uttering Skywalker’s name is like a sacred invocation. Even Han Solo, who had been along side him for many of his mythic feats had spoken the name with heavy-hearted pause.

     “You knew him?” asks Rey. Of course- they must have been pilots with the Alliance around the same time- Rey could even imagine Verlaine might have outranked him, green as he was back in the day.

     Verlaine laughs. “He’s one of the best. I was sorry when he left the fleet, but then I did too, for a time.” They stop in the middle of the hall while Verlaine reconsiders. “You know what? I’d like to say hello. Why don’t you use my personal comm suite?”

     Rey baffles at that. Even Poe doesn’t have his own, and he is very nearly a general- probably will be soon, now that he has some forced downtime with which to fill out the paperwork. “That would be very gracious of you,” Rey says, pleased.

     “I guess you don’t spend a few decades as an elected monarch for nothing,” Verlaine grins, switching gears and leading her down another turn in the hall. “And here we are.”

     Rey is ushered into some of the most eclectic personal quarters she has ever seen, though her experience is admittedly limited. For someone who had lived an incredibly insular life up until a year ago, Rey was quickly developing a talent for being swiftly befriended and invited into strangers’ homes. Verlaine clears some debris of off a low computer console while Rey inspects the decoration of the room, which though small, is superfluous- it’s a whole room _just meant for sitting with guests_ , with doors to the bedroom and ‘fresher. Remarkable. A series of looping banners line the stone walls close to the ceiling, with finely embroidered edges and bits of jewel sewn into the cloth. In each corner of the room stands a lamp, though none of them match any of the others. Rey best likes the lamp that has a number of red bulbs blossoming from a twisting, golden rod. It casts light on a beautiful mosaic of a city, pieced together from chips of metal, glinting red and pink. On the opposite wall, a large holoframe displays a younger-looking image of Verlaine, dressed in a fine gown and arm in arm with Sullustan and looking radiantly happy. Every inch of space is covered with art and artefacts, lush carpet, or cushions made of tantalizing material that Rey has to school herself not to touch.

     Having spent most of her recent time in the company of an expert diplomat, Rey attempts to offer a perfunctory comment. “This is the most beautiful home I have _ever_ been in,” she says, missing the mark of Casual Compliment by a parsec.

     “You sweet thing,” Veraline laughs, fixing her hands on her hips and looking around the room like she’s trying to take it in from Rey’s perspective, and Rey does a second take along with her. In truth, it may be an over glorified hallway. “I flew with the Alliance on and off since before the Death Star, and my husband since Endor. We saw _a lot_ and couldn’t help but pick up a few things along the way.” She brushes a bit of dust off of a silver necklace, mounted on the wall.

     Rey doesn’t envy Verlaine her rooms or possessions, not really- if anything it makes Rey grateful. Now that she has left Jakku she can have a path that leads _her_ all across the galaxy, and maybe in thirty years, she too will have a wealth of experiences to look back on that she never would have known otherwise. She smiles at her host, then takes a seat at the console to tap in Luke’s transmitter coordinates, waiting for his reply.

     “Good to hear from you Rey,” says Luke Skywalker’s voice, coming in before his holoimage forms completely.

     “Master Luke!”

     “Hello Red Five,” Verlaine chimes in, over Rey’s shoulder.

     “Is that--Evaan! I thought by now you’d be off with Nien, sitting pretty on some pleasure planet with your heels up.”

     “And miss all the fun with the kids? Tsk,” she chides him, patting Rey’s back conspiratorially. “I’ll leave you to it- just wanted a look at the length of your beard so I can settle a bet with the mister,” Verlaine laughs.

     “Give that old spacepirate my regards,” Luke says, amused. Verlaine takes her leave with a wink and a squeeze of Rey’s shoulder. Luke’s image continues to examine her. “You’re making friends.”

     “Well, there are so many more people here than on Ahch-To,” Rey starts, apologetically.

     Luke cuts her off. “You don’t need to be sorry about that. It’s good to see. It’s difficult to practice compassion in isolation,” he says with a small frown that admits his mixed record on this count. “If you were able to train at a full Jedi temple you would have had many initiates to study alongside, and many masters to learn from. Not all of your lessons at this time will come from me.”

     “Understood,” she says, sitting more upright in her seat, prepared. “Are things going well with your mission, Master? May I- may I ask what it is?”

     Luke’s hand comes to his chin in consideration. “I suppose that now you’re not with me in person to plead to be taken along, I can tell you.”

     “I wouldn’t have _presumed-_ ”

     “Rey,” he says, lifting a eyebrow that is legible in meaning, even over holo. Rey stills. “I have suspected for some time that my old apprentice is still alive, biding his time and training in the dark ways of the Force with his new master.”

     Her skin crawls. It was a miracle that Chewbacca got them off of Starkiller Base ahead of its explosion. How under the Stars could Kylo Ren have survived? He didn’t deserve to walk the surface of this, or any other planet after all that he had done. Rey had been the one to comfort his heartbroken mother, after all. She had little mercy for someone discarding such fine parents as Generals Organa and Solo when she had had to do without any her entire life. “No,” she says. It’s all the response she can muster.

     “I am attuned to him in the Force, I must trust what it is telling me,” says Luke. “I believe he is now back in motion, and I would prefer to find him before any further damage is done.”

     “I want to come with you,” Rey says, faster than she can control.

     Luke smiles kindly, correct in his prediction. “I appreciate your initiative, but this is a problem that I have created, and I wouldn’t wish for you to come to harm because I failed to see it through. Kylo Ren is not your responsibility.”

     This may be so, but there is certainly unfinished business between them, Rey feels. If her master will not allow her to seek him, that does not mean he will return the favor of avoiding her. “But he _is_ fixated on me, isn’t he?” she says.

     Luke heaves a sigh and drops his head. “Yes,” he says, darkly. “You arrived to the temple on the same day. Your mother had been missing for months, turning up only to stay for one night then leaving without you in the morning. I think she got passage offworld on the _Falcon_ , of all things,” Luke says, with his well practiced, sad smile. “I remember you both- you were small and young and screaming and he was tall and quiet. He looked after you- felt a kinship because you were a pair of rejects, as far as he was concerned. When the temple fell at his hands I never found you in the massacre. I suspected-” Luke cuts off, no doubt in the middle of a grim memory. “I thought he had taken you to his new master as evidence of what he’d done.”

     “He’s the one who hid me on Jakku,” Rey realizes. Several images slot together now, in her mind. There is a face to the promises now- to the _lie_. “He’s the one who told me my mother was coming back for me.”

     “If I had known you were still alive-”

     “I know,” says Rey. They’ve been over this before. She is reminded of the new discoveries of her own. “Master, I spoke to her.”

     “Sheev? Where did you find her?”

     “In a First Order detention cell.”

     “ _In a First Order_ -” he mutters. “See, Rey? You know how to find trouble on your own without following me for it. So you freed her and then what?”

     Rey sighs. “She stole the shuttle and marooned me and my friends on the Rimma.”

     “You hoped she would join you,” Luke says very gently. They hadn’t discussed it specifically, but when the subject of her mother had come up in the past, Rey always felt that he was trying to manage her expectations in the event of a reunion- which she had ignored.

     “Of course,” Rey says. She knows how Luke met his father and convinced him to rebel against the Emperor as his final act. “You did, too.”

     “It didn’t happen in one rotation, Rey,” he reminds her. “You will see her again, if that is the path the Force has made for you.”

     “I know,” Rey agrees. “What I don’t know is how I’m going to be able to think of anything else while you’re out looking for Kylo Ren without me, Master.”

     “Be still,” Luke commands. “Wait, and listen to the Force.”

     Rey frowns. “I’ve done so much waiting, already.”

     “Then you should already _know_ the lesson of patience, Rey,” he answers back, firmly. His posture shifts in a way that indicates the conversation is almost at an end. “I’m certain you will find a way to make yourself useful to Resistance until I return.”

     “Yes, Master. May the Force be with you.”

     “May the Force be with you, Rey.”

     Rey breathes deeply after his transmission cuts out and decides to take advantage of her secluded location for a few more minutes so she can meditate.

 

     There’s something about the _Millennium Falcon_ that feels more like home to Rey than anyplace else in the galaxy. It could be because it was a vestige of Jakku, she sometimes thought, but more likely- it was the setting of her first great happiness. It was where she cemented her first friendship, and the craft she first flew into open space, not to mention- the origin of heroes she had worshipped all her life. The _Falcon’s_ steely walls and mechanics were a comforting sight, grimey and outdated as they might be. Rey unpacks a few necessities into a bunk that has become her own by habit, and goes about searching the cargo compartments for bedding and any spare holocrons Chewbacca has laying around. She builds herself a little nest of blankets and kicks off her boots so she can get properly comfortable, then climbs in.

     While the first three holocrons are enjoyable, she keeps pausing the fourth. Rey can’t help but feel like she had better stagger her intake- after all, she has no idea how long she’ll have to wait before the Force or whatever stunt the First Order next pulls decides how to spend her time. With access to the mess hall on the base, she can’t even count on hunting for food to while away the hours. Burrowing deeper into the nest of blankets, Rey gives up on her holos and binge reading of Resistance databases for the night and chucks them into the foot of the bunk for when she gets truly desperate.

     Several uneventful days pass on D’Qar until one morning Rey wakes up to anguished howling. A metallic clang sounds through the corridors of the _Falcon_ , Chewbacca and Zarro both dropping cargo crates just inside of the hatch.

     “You baby, it’s just a rainstorm,” Rey can hear Zarro saying, coming toward the bunks. She appears a moment later in the living area, her short black hair absolutely plastered to her face and dripping. Even the usually yellow bits of trim on her flightsuit are so sodden they look brown. Zarro riffles through the storage compartments where Rey had found bedding the days before and turns up several towels, while in the distant corridor Chewbacca continues to cry about how this isn’t a rainstorm- this is _thunderstorm_. With _lightning_. Zarro rolls her eyes when she shares a glance with Rey, then tosses a towel over her head and retreats to deliver the rest to Chewbacca.

     Now, Ahch-To was a watery planet with a particularly wet season when its triple moons were in synch (that Rey had managed to completely miss while offworld)- but overall, it could best be described as ‘drizzly’. The constant, chilly mist kept the vegetation green and the rocks slippery, but it was numbing in effect. The precipitation of Ahch-To lacked drama- but now that Rey is listening for it she can indeed hear the savage roll of D’Qar’s weather. The rumble of thunder sounds like the entire planet might be a great engine, grinding to life.

     Rey hops out of her bunk and doesn’t even bother with shoving her feet into boots. She just grabs her belt and lightsaber out of habit and races toward the ramp out of the ship so she can get a look for herself. She vaults over Chewbacca and Zarro’s dropped crates, ignoring the drenched wookiee’s warnings that it’s supposed to storm all day.

     “C’mon big guy,” says Zarro, attempting to towel off his back despite their considerable height difference. “I’ll make you a nice hot cup of wyyr.”

     The Falcon’s hatch opens, allowing in a rainy gust of wind that Rey embraces with wide flung arms. As though summoned by her arrival, a flash of lightning cracks through the sky outside, causing another pitiful cry from Chewbacca, so she hurries down the ramp and closes the door behind herself.

     “Oh!” Rey sputters, immediately pelted by rain that is so torrential she may as well have just dived into the sea. She briefly worries that she has never learned to swim, before reassuring herself by wiggling her bare toes into the sloppy but solid earth. All around her, silvery puddles are forming, constantly dappled with ripples as the rain falls.

     She _must_ jump in them.

     Rey jogs around the perimeter of the _Millennium Falcon_ with her eyes closed, splashing about and barely even needing the gentle nudges of the Force to keep from running into something. She feels so completely enthralled and united with her surroundings that after a few more circuits around the ship, she plops down on to the flooded ground to sit and meditate for a while.

     “You are a strange little creature,” says a voice, sometime into this exercise.

     Rey cracks one eye open, squinting through the rain coursing down her face despite using her hands as a visor. In front of her, Finn is standing in rubbery looking boots and an oiled, hooded poncho.

     “It is a _beautiful_ morning,” she says, meaning it. She has to lick the rain off her lips to speak properly. “I suppose you’d like to get breakfast?”

     “Uh huh, you’re gonna have to come inside, though,” he says, offering a hand to pull her off the ground. “Scavenger Soup isn’t on the menu.”

     Rey gets up, slicking the puddle she was sitting in off her backside as best she can- which is not at all. Every single layer of her clothing is soaked. Finn stares at her, no doubt exasperated with her state. “Shall we?” she grins, brightly.

“You could at least get your boots for inside the base,” he flusters, still ruled by some sense of Orderly decorum. “The General wants to see us at 0200, after all.”

     Rey sighs and runs back inside the Falcon to grab them, but refuses to put them on until they get into the building. Several people give her funny looks while she sloshes through the halls of the complex, but no funnier than the curious glances she already routinely gets for being a Jedi novelty. She slips out of whatever Force-attunement must have been keeping her warm, however, and shivers as they reach the mess hall.

     “Thank goodness. Caf. Hot, hot caf.”

     A breakfast of panna cakes and blue sauce with a number of their friends devolves into Rey’s first game of sabacc. Hours pass in a flutter of Flasks, Sabers, Staves, and Coins. When Rey forms her third consecutive Idiot’s Array, it of course puts some of the more skeptical participants off. Once is beginner's luck, twice is being a quick study, three times-

     “We’re never playing with you again,” says Jessika, sticking her tongue out.

“Admit it. You’re Force-hustling us,” says Snap.

     Rey just shrugs, and pushes her cards into the middle of the table. “What can I say, the Queen of Air and Darkness just likes me best. Good thing you were only playing for juna berries,” she grins, leaning across to pluck one off Snap’s pile and pop it into her mouth. She shoves the rest of the berries to Jessika, whom he had cleaned out early in the game.

     “I changed my mind,” Jessika says, devouring a handful. “You can come to Tatooine with me. We can shark some nerf-herders at zinbiddle.”

     After the game disbands, Rey and Finn walk Poe back to his quarters to rest, as he’s still recovering from surgery to repair his recent injury.

     “Aww, you guys didn’t _have_ to walk me home,” he says, once they reach his room. They steer him toward the bunk so he doesn’t trip over his own exhausted feet. Poe crashes and carefully rolls on his good side. “Which makes it all the sweeter,” he yawns.

     “After a kilo of juna berries, we oughta be,” says Rey, helping him off with his boots while Finn fetches his next dose of meds and some water. BB-8 squares away Poe’s boots the way she likes and offers fresh socks from the under-bunk storage.

     Finn arranges Poe’s blankets very purposefully, like a protective seal. “If this meeting with the General is a mission we might not see you for a few days, buddy.”

     Poe half frowns. “Well, I’ll use the time wisely and get better so I can come along for the next one,” he says. “ _Or_... torment BB-8 by playing music on the holonet at full blast,” he adds with a cheeky grin. BB-8 squawks. “Don’t act like you don’t sing along too, Bee.”

     Rey giggles, having been treated to BB-8’s musical stylings on a number of occasions. “No idea what we might be up to?”

     “I mean, the base could use some rainproofing going by the leaky roof in most of the rooms,” Finn guesses, “-but I bet it’s something _super_ cool that only an ex-stormtrooper and a Jedi could pull off. Like rescuing a princess from bandits, or toppling a criminal empire-”

     “-or slaying a Toloran ice dragon?” Poe offers.

     Finn tuts. “Serious suggestions only, please.”

     “Yeah! Like piloting an asteroid through hyperspace using only pod engines,” Rey grins.

     “Oh, that one. I pick that one,” says Poe. “Take _lots_ of holos.”

     Finn leans over Poe’s bed to kiss him goodbye. “You got it, buddy.”

     In a chattering flurry, BB-8 informs Finn that if he’s going with Rey, he ought to remember to do all his updates overnight so they are ready for her in mornings, and that she appreciates weather reports at night, _and-_ Rey has to remind her that Finn cannot understand all of these suggestions.

     “I can fend for myself for a few days, BB-8.” Rey says, dropping to her knees to give the droid a hug before they leave. She coos a doting little beep. “Yes, I know.”

     “You know Finn isn’t going to perform mech duties for Rey, right?” Poe teases BB-8, beckoning her back, and waving them off.

 

     It so happens that the task General Organa has in mind for them is not in the realm of dragon-slaying or asteroid-hijacking. Korsella V, a recently terraformed moon in the Cerean Reach, has been out of touch with the Resistance for over a month. In the wake of the Hosnian System’s demise, every far flung planet and colony counts- no matter how small. There is some concern that the leader of the colony, Kor Sedan, is no longer in a position of authority, and the Korsellans will no longer be willing to honor his commitment to the Resistance. The defunct Imperial airfield still left there from the Galactic War is one of the westernmost staging bases- and with the First Order’s track record for popping up in the nearby Unknown Regions, it's an asset General Organa is unwilling to let slip away.

     “Shouldn’t we be sending someone with a little more diplomatic experience under their belt?” Finn whispers to Rey as they leave the briefing.

     Rey shrugs. “It sounds like they just need someone to put a face to the General’s request for aid.”

     “We do have good faces,” Finn grins, exampling his most winning smile. Rey nods approvingly. How could the Korsellans say no to that?

     “I bet Chewbacca and Zarro would be happy to be ‘allocated’ for our transport,” she says, grabbing his hand to hurry him along through the halls, the walls around them resounding with the rumble of the ongoing thunderstorm. “ _Especially_ if it means a break away from this weather.”

     After a cursory search of the base, they track down the pilots in the _Falcon,_ still hiding out from the rain. A grumpy Chewbacca is going out of his way to make work for himself that involves a warm blowtorch when they arrive inside the ship. He growls for Finn and Rey to shuck their wet things before they go making any more puddles in his ship.

     “Like you’re not the one dripping them in the first place!” says Zarro, cheerfully mopping up behind him and tossing the rag over her shoulder. “What’re you kids up to?”

     “Don’t suppose you’d wanna get out of here and catch some sunshine...” starts Finn, casually leaning against a bulkhead.

     Rey wrings her braided hair into an offered towel. “General Organa has a moon in the Cerean Reach that needs to be paid a visit.” She tosses the towel to Finn, who pats himself down, too.

     “A _drought-plighted_ moon,” Finn remarks. “If that’s something you’re into.”

     Chewbacca turns to Zarro with his hands folded in plea and a hopeful gurgle.

     “Well, we’ve got an assignment in few days we’ll have to get back for...” Zarro considers, scrunching up her face in consideration of the timing, “-but we can at least drop you off!”

     With a victorious yelp, Chewbacca springs out of the stow he’s been working in and leaps forward to fold them both in a slightly damp, furry hug. In the midst of it, Finn glances at Rey. “Maybe we’re more experienced negotiators than I realized.”

     Chewbacca releases them and instantly spins on his heel to go prime the engines and run his calculations with Zarro close behind.

     “They’re already partial to our faces, I think,” Rey giggles, before following to get a look at the masterful way Chewbacca works an astrogation buffer.

     On the way to Korsella V, Finn and Rey run strategies, many of them purposely silly. They _could_ march right up to whatever Officious Person, wailing wookiee in tow, and demand fulfillment of Kor Sedan’s promise- if they wanted to hung by their toenails upon return to the General. They _could_ also lobby each and every citizen personally for their support and pressure a decision by popular vote- if there weren’t over twenty thousand people to talk to.

     “Do we even come right out with it and say we’re with the Resistance?” Finn wonders. “What if they’ve become hostile, and that’s why they haven’t responded to our transmissions?”

     Rey considers this carefully. The situation is so open ended. There could have been a takeover by the Order, an internal political shift, or damaged communications array... _anything_. It’s not a terrible idea to have some plan for their protection in place, but the last thing they want to do is misrepresent the Resistance, or create an unnecessary atmosphere of deceit.

     “I think the first step is to find Kor Sedan. From what the General said, we can be honest with him.”

     “Good. Okay,” nods Finn. “I prefer to be honest.”

     Rey knows this about him, and smiles. Finn only lies if he’s backed into a corner and there’s only one right answer to get out of it intact. She resolves to do her best to watch his back and keep them _both_ honest.

     “-But for the record, _if_ we need secret identities we should totally be the ‘Bacca Twins,” says Finn, staring off into the distance. “...Just two hairless wookiee younglings on the run.”

     “Reybacca sounds like an amazing alibi,” Rey snorts.


	2. Chapter 2

     When the _Millennium Falcon_ arrives at the Korsellan capital spaceport, Rey fills out the necessary forms for their arrival with the customs officer, who is able to advise her on accommodations for their stay. Officer Drik stares over Rey’s shoulder at her three friends while they unload a grav sled, and she can’t help notice him jump every time Chewbacca speaks. He informs Rey that due to drought conditions they are responsible for their own importation of water, and after verifying a _third_ time that only she and Finn are making an extended visit on the planet, Rey turns back to her companions. In addition to a sled for their own belongings, Chewbacca has gifted them with three jugs of water and extra rations, blankets, and a subspace transmitter he has specifically modified for getting in touch with trusted Resistance contacts in _any_ sector. Just incase they make any more accidental realspace reentries, Chewbacca tells Rey in a paternal howl.

     “What an old softie,” says Zarro, elbowing Chewbacca and then turning to Finn to surreptitiously stuff a bag of credits in his hands. “You didn’t get these from me. Shh.”

     Rey thanks them both and stands beside the grav sled with Finn until the others get back up the ramp into the _Falcon_ and it finally lifts away. They set off down a purple-grey dirt road toward the inn, pointing out some of the more unique sights along the way. On the horizon in every direction there are metal spires about 15 meters tall that form a network around the dusty surface of Korsella V, stabilizing it’s artificial atmosphere. Everything else on the surface is built low to stay within the level of containment. Deprived of native flora, the colonists have applied artistic flair to the drab concrete of their buildings, painting organic, undulating shapes on every surface. The Korsellans on the street are just as colorfully splattered, their faces striped with freckles of green and sometimes amber.

     “Not quite as many people around as I would have expected for a mining colony that’s too busy to return a transmission,” Rey notes.

     Finn halts the grav sled outside of their inn, tapping the access panel for entry. “They have sunlight all but four hours of their rotation, it might be nighttime locally,” he says.

     Inside, there are a number of workstations and a bar on the ground level, but only one attendant on the job.

     “Hello?” she says, eyebrows jumping up her freckled forehead in surprise.

     Rey approaches the counter and squints at the price chart, offering the requisite credits. “Have any quarters with two bunks left?”

     “Lady, we have _all_ the quarters left,” she says blearily, sliding the credits off the counter and into her apron. “As far as I’m concerned- as long as you clean up after yourselves you can take your pick.”

     Rey frowns in confusion but vaguely points at the chart again, and the attendant hands her a corresponding access chip. “Thank you?”

     “The room is through that door, all the way back on the left,” the attendant says with a weary gesture. She looks tired in a way that verges on unhealthy, the closer Rey looks.

     Finn leans against the counter. “Is it, uhm- _actually_ evening here?” he asks the attendant.

     “Hmm? No,” she says, blinking heavily. “Will that be all?”

     If Rey felt as tired as this woman looks, she would just take the brush-off and come around later asking more questions, but she suspects that wouldn’t much improve the attendant’s responsiveness.

     “We’re looking to meet with Kor Sedan,” she states. “We have official business with him on behalf of the New Republic.” The ‘business’ is Resistance business, of course, but Rey isn’t above summoning the most legitimate authority at her disposal to wake this woman up. Several of Resistance command are technically members of the New Republic senate, after all.

     “Kor Sedan, _may he rest in peace_ \- was among the first taken by the plague.”

     Finn startles. “Plague?!” Both he and Rey take an instinctive step back.

     The attendant rolls her eyes. “The medics don’t think it’s communicable, but we don’t really have any research surgeons in the colony to say otherwise,” she explains. “Look, I don’t know. I just work at an inn.”

     Rey decides to ease up on the intimidation tactics immediately. “I’m very sorry to hear about this,” she says kindly, bowing her head. “The loss of the Kor must have been very difficult for the colony in a time of crisis. May I ask who the minister is now, where we might find him?”

     The attendant sighs and reaches under the counter for a cheap holoprojector, slotting it into her workstation and tapping in something and pulling it back out again. It flickers up a map. “Kor Jamric is the latest minister, he’ll be at the Korbloc, I imagine.”

     “Thank you,” says Finn, sliding an extra credit across the counter.

     They shuffle off to their room and shut the door behind themselves before unpacking their luggage and conferring. Finn frowns, and not just because he’s hefting a jug of Chewbacca’s water to the floor.

     “Well that explains why it’s such a ghost town here. Sounds like there has been an awful run of luck. Drought, then plague, and then their leader dying...”

     “Consideration for the Resistance probably got lost in the chaos,” Rey nods.

     “It’s kinda understandable, if they want out of the commitment,” says Finn. He sits down on a bunk with a ration pack and offers her half, but Rey declines and just takes a seat next to him to think.

     She really can’t blame the colony for being self involved while navigating this pile up of circumstances. The attendant made it sound like there wasn’t a proper medical consensus on what was happening yet. How were the people of Korsella V expected to contribute to the protection of the galaxy when they couldn’t even protect themselves from this crisis? Rey fidgets and thinks back on her lessons.

     Master Luke would say something about how conflict was an opportunity for grace. It’s clear to Rey that there’s only one gracious thing to do. She stands up again and looks at Finn, determined.

     “Korsella V is supposed to be our ally- and that should be a two way street. We can’t expect their help- which we _do_ need, if we don’t also offer it in return,” she says.

     Finn smiles back at her in pride. “Right!” He fetches the the map to the Korbloc out of their pile of luggage and activates it. “We’ll go meet Kor Jamric and find out what we can do.”

 

     When Rey and Finn arrive at their destination a few hours later they discover that the outside of the Korbloc is unmistakably indicative of the colony’s unrest. While other buildings were carefully painted in pictorial designs, the Korbloc was crusted over in layer upon layer of haphazard graffiti. It was clear there had been attempts to whitewash the walls and start fresh in the past, but recently whoever had been on top of that effort had given up. There were slogans and political statements, quite popularly, and effigies of what Rey presumed were public officials- but most distressing were the names. On top of the angry red words and demonized faces were small, white lettered names, chalked in columns. Many were just family names, with tallies after them.

     Rey and Finn share a grim look while standing in the empty street, looking at a list of all the people who ought to be walking it.

     Entering the building is complete whiplash. The Korbloc is busier with people than anywhere else they’ve seen today- even the market they pass on their way across town. Most of workstations are manned, and throughout the main arcade there are young, exhausted assistants scurrying between the various counters and an elderly woman pushing a little serving cart from desk to desk offering tea. It certainly looks like the workers could use some refreshment, Rey thinks.

     Under a sign that indicates ‘Undersecretary of the Kor’ in both Basic and Cerean is a middle aged woman with freckles so bright an amber that they appear gold. Like most of the Korbloc employees, she wears a functional gray tunic with an unassuming silhouette. “If you’re looking for provisional adjustments, you want the desk to the left,” she snaps at Rey and Finn, barely looking up from her datapad.

     “Please,” Rey bows, and Finn follows her lead. “We are representatives from the New Republic. We wish to meet with Kor Jamric.”

     “Representatives from the New Republic?” the woman repeats testily, eyeing them up. “ _Finally_ ,” she sighs.

     “Uhm, yes Ma’am,” says Finn. “We are here on the behalf of General Leia Organa to offer sympathies for Kor Sedan - _may he rest in peace_ ,” Finn says, just as they had heard the attendant at the inn phrase it. When the application of the custom seems to solicit the right response from the receptionist, he continues. “- And to learn of Korsella V’s difficulties, that we might offer help.”

     The receptionist gives them a weary smile and nod, and presses a button on her workstation. “Two representatives on behalf of Leia Organa, Kor. May I admit?” she asks, still pressing.

     “You may,” comes a comm crackled voice.

     Rising from her seat with groan, the receptionist beckons them to follow her through the arcade to the back most wall, where double duristeel doors open just as they approach. As soon as she ushers them through, the receptionist leaves and the doors shut behind them. The room is as wide as the rest of the building, but only four or five paces deep and lined with windows that overlook a stone courtyard lined with sculptures and a dried-up fountain at it’s heart. In front of where the fountain once featured is a sparse looking desk, with an even more sparse-looking man sitting behind it. He’s close to their own age but already balding, and the important-looking collar that frames his face only serves to make his shoulders look slight. When Rey and Finn make their approach, he puts down a steaming cup of tea and stands, revealing himself to be even shorter than Rey had anticipated.

     He circles around the desk and bows his head. “I am Kor Persel Tanpin Jamric of P’Kor, the eleventh Kor of Korsella V, minister of colonial affairs,” he says, gravely.

     “Rey,” she nods.

     “Finn.”

     The Kor’s eyebrows pinch together, shifting the green freckles on his face in an expression of befuddlement. “Rey. And Finn,” he repeats, biting the one syllable of each of their names. “Rey and Finn... What?”

     Rey and Finn look at each other, embarrassed by their immediate shortcomings. They want to offer help but they can’t even offer _full names_ to this man. Rey is nearly ready to divulge herself as Beru Sheev Skywalker when Finn opens his mouth.

     “Bacca!” he spits. “Rey and Finn Bacca, of... of...”

     “The _Millennium Falcon_ ,” Rey finishes, figuring it’s as good as anything else, and lightyears better than Kashyyk. Neither she or Finn knows exactly where they were born, but it’s where they met, and that’s good enough.

     “Splendid,” says Kor Jamric, as though this has improved his outlook exponentially. He shakes hands with them energetically and then smiles expectantly at them.

     Finn rattles through their spiel again, “We’re here on the behalf of the New Republic and especially General Organa to offer sympathies for Kor Sedan - _may he rest in peace-”_

     “-May he rest in peace-” echoes Kor Jamric. “Thank you.”

     After bowing his head, Finn continues. “The General was very sorry to lose touch with Korsella V recently, after she and your predecessor had made friends of their respective communities.”

     “You _mean_ the Resistance, but you don’t want to _say_ ‘the Resistance’,” Kor Jamric observes shrewdly. Rey and Finn nod, having already decided to be as forthcoming as possible. “Well, I am aware of the previous arrangements Kor Sedan- _may he rest in peace-_ made with the Resistance in regards to the airfield, but all political affiliations with external bodies must be ratified anew with a change in executive. Especially when they require such a hefty burden on our personnel.”

     “We understand this,” says Rey. “We want to express the General’s continued interest in the partnership, but it’s not our primary objective in seeking your audience, Kor. We came here today to put ourselves at your disposal. Our hope is that with more insight into your colony’s difficulties we could offer Korsella V the help it needs to recover.”

     Finn smiles broadly at Rey, both having flawlessly delivered the lines they rehearsed on their long walk to the Korbloc. They turn their attention back to the Kor, hopeful.

     “Unless you can re-terraform an entire moon I doubt there’s much you can do,” huffs Kor Jamric.

     Finn squints at the Kor’s unexpectedly rude tone, then glances at Rey, as both were at least expecting a plea for medical aid. “But what about the plague? Do you know what’s causing it?” he asks.

     Kor Jamric laughs as though Finn has gone with his whole ‘runaway wookie younglings’ angle, clutching his hand over his mouth. “Alarmist propaganda! There is no plague, just a seasonal virus. If everyone just seeks treatment it will pass soon enough,” he says, unconcerned.

     Rey’s stomach drops, disgusted by his disregard.

     “But haven’t people died?!” she cries out, because she has _seen_ the empty streets and the wall of names, and she won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. Immediately she regrets that her outburst is bound to drag down the composure of the conversation.

     The Kor sighs. “That can’t be undone,” he says, quietly, before launching into what sounds like a well rehearsed speech. “That was _before_ there was a treatment! The symptoms can be managed now. Most of the afflicted are well enough to return to work even if it is a struggle. It’s time for Korsella V to focus on itself until it is well again.” The Kor begins to wave his hands at them in a way that makes them edge toward the door. “Which is why the governing committee can’t possibly ratify support for the Resistance at this time.”

     “But!”

     “-Thank you very much for visiting with the Princess’s regards,” Kor Jamric says abruptly, as the doors behind them open again. The receptionist from before is waiting outside. “Would you see our visitors out please, Undersecretary Dae?”

     Rey glances at Finn, who seems to notice something she hasn’t yet. He gives her a squint back she can’t quite decode, then turns back to the Kor. “Thank you, Kor Jamric,” she says at a near whisper, to keep from shouting again.

     Dae frowns apologetically and motions for them to follow her, but moves so idly that Finn, who tends to move at full speed- has a hard time not stepping on her heels. When they get close enough to the door of the Korbloc that it isn’t extremely rude to rush past the Undersecretary in their departure, Finn takes Rey’s hand and quickly pulls her the rest of the way out of the building.

     “I can’t believe him!” she fumes once they’re safely outside. “He couldn’t even _admit-_ ”

     “When was the last time you heard someone call General Organa ‘Princess’?” Finn asks.

     The question is so random, it pauses Rey’s anger while she has to think a moment. Master Luke mentions his sister plenty, but never in that way- and neither does Chewbacca. None of the pilots or infantry she has met would _dare_... “Never,” she realizes.

     “I spend a little more time on the base, and let me tell you- no one _our age_ ever calls her that. Even Poe, and he _loves_ the General- has every biography written about her,” Finn explains. “No one except for pompous jackasses who are really hung up on status.”

     “Maybe...” Rey wonders, crossing her arms. It could be a matter of saving face, not to accept help from outsiders, or even _admit_ to the severity of the problem. She sighs. “Keeping the Resistance at arm's length isn’t in anyone’s best interest here, is it?”

     Finn shakes his head.

     They can’t just call it quits, Rey knows. The staging base is an important part of defending innocent lives, and this task was delegated to them for a reason. Obviously, the Resistance is much too busy re-mounting their intelligence network and recruiting Core worlds for the General to make an appearance (not to mention the First Order creeping around every corner and a patricidal son running amok) but the General believed they could handle bringing Korsella V back into the fold. She was _relying_ on them to create results. Rey would just have to keep believing it was possible too, even if their first contact made no progress.

     Finn looks around their surroundings, clearly starting to formulate a new strategy. “There’s more to the story of this ‘plague’ that isn’t a plague.”

     “Definitely,” Rey agrees, with a final glance at the wall of names.

 

     As the indisputably charming but Force and First Order ignorant ‘Bacca Twins’, Rey and Finn begin their investigation. They head back towards the inn, and weave in and out of dusty side streets so they can catch as many passers-by as possible. The streets are only marginally more populated at this hour, but the people are putting her on edge in a way a crowd hasn’t since she’d visited Nar Shaddaa with Master Luke. Put on guard, her hand covers the hidden lightsaber hilt at her side- until a crying child whose parents are too weak to carry him home helps Rey place her anxiety.

     “They’re all in such pain,” she says.

     From the youngest to the oldest, those employed with desk jobs, or doing manual labor in the mines- all are afflicted by the recent sickness. Some people refuse to talk to them at all, which gives Rey the impression that many colonists blame offworlders for the disease. Others are convinced that there weren’t enough environmental impact studies down when the moon was terraformed, and that both the drought and plague are the result. While Rey is unqualified to decide if the two problems are related in cause, it’s obvious the drought conditions are exacerbating the health of the colony- even a mech droid knows that sick people need water.

     In a cantina not far from their inn, Rey and Finn find a man who had worked for the Environeer Corps until he was forced to leave work to nurse his family.

     “The drought was caused by a blow out in the atmospheric containment system’s programming,” he explains, slowly sipping a cup of water- a fifth of his Korbloc mandated ration for the day. “We were working on repairs when the plague hit- but the lead engineer died. It’s been slow going without her input.”

     Finn throws his hands in the air, no longer able to disguise his exasperation after a day of investigation. “Why didn’t they get a new engineer? It should have been a _priority-_ right?” he asks, turning to Rey. “People need water! _Unbelievable_!”

     The engineer nods. “This is why people are so frustrated with the Korbloc. Kor Sedan- _may he rest in peace-_ also died before the treatment came, and the government ground to a halt. Under a new Kor, they have to re-submit all the personnel requisitions from P’Kor Prime.”

     “Now _that_ I believe.” Finn looks at Rey with a raised eyebrow. It certainly does sound like Kor Jamric’s party line.

Rey frowns. “So the drought started about three months ago, people became fatally ill a month later...When was there a treatment?”

     “A few weeks ago one of the merchants turned up with supplies- I don’t know the ins and outs of it- but it helps. If you take it like you’re supposed to, you get well enough to get by,” shrugs the engineer. At that point, he excuses himself so he can walk the rest of the way home before he’s too tired to make it.

     Rey and Finn keep asking around the catina, hoping to find someone who might have more information about the treatment, or even someone to show it to them in action. They have some luck with a group of miners. Shard, as they call it, is a cloudy looking crystal that the afflicted can boil into their water ration to create a solution. The miners had purchased it from N’ra Fleetfire, a provisions merchant who had been capitalizing on Korsella V’s drought conditions by importing the bulk of the colony’s water. Apparently, Fleetfire was so moved by the plight of the people when the plague hit, she had taken it upon herself to acquire Shard and had become its sole distributor. Korsellans were waiting in line for hours to get one stone at a time- some of them multiple times on the behalf of bedridden family members. Treated with Shard, most people still experienced extreme fatigue and cramping- but they were no longer bedridden with harsher symptoms.

     Despite Rey’s most eloquent explanations and Finn’s most endearing smiles, none of the miners were willing to part with a sample of shard that they might try to study. Rey couldn’t blame any of them for refusing to part with something that was saving their lives.

     “We’ll just have to wait until Fleetfire is on world again to get some,” supposes Finn. From their conversation with the miners they could expect her and her crew to be in town five days from now.

     “I have some ideas about what we can do in the meanwhile,” says Rey. She knows her way around a busted moisture vaporator from her days on Jakku- how different can an atmospheric emitter be?

     Finn rolls his eyes. “I’ll _bet_ you do.” He then dives into his pack and pulls out his canteen, offering her the last of the water they brought with them for the day’s excursion. “You’ve been at it all day, though,” he says with concern. “We should get some rest, and take care of ourselves. After all, If you got sick who would save Korsella V?”

     “I think you would work out _something_ , Finn,” Rey says with a skeptical smile, handing him back the empty canteen.

     “Yep. I just wanted to hear you say it,” he grins, then motions out the cantina door. “Let’s beat it.”

     Rey follows him out gladly, tired of ignoring her growling stomach. The pungent smell of the spicecakes that are a popular staple of Korsellan cuisine had put them off their appetite at lunch, so they hadn’t all day. Without acquisition chips they won’t be able to get a meal made from anything grown in the hydroponic farms anyway, so Rey and Finn head back to the inn for their rations. The same, weary attendant is on duty when they return. Rey asks her for another holomap for tomorrow, this time of the atmospheric emitters in the dry waste surrounding the city.

     Back in their room they eat and drink, then finally collapse on their bunks in exhaustion. Rey had gotten so used to the wetness of Ahch-To and D’Qar lately, she can now identify the dry stinging of her skin in a way she would have taken for granted if she had visited here fresh off of Jakku. If it were warmer, she might be able to close her eyes and imagine herself there again. There’s even a bit of powdery Korsellan dirt clinging to her clothes to help complete the effect. She bids Finn goodnight and wraps into her blanket, and her sleeping mind fills in the rest of the blanks.

 

     She is walking through the desert. The sand is golden, instead of the dusky purple-gray of Korsella V. She lags a moment, looking at how much further ahead she has to go. There seems to be an endless expanse between her and home. Her lungs suck in air as hot as the exhaust from a freighter, and she can’t imagine how they haven’t already withered. While she’s standing still, someone catches up with her from behind. They march past, tenting a jacket over their head- and she knows it. Finn drops his arms and turns to look back at her.

     “I didn’t know you were coming,” she says.

     “Of course!”

     Together, the distance closes faster than Rey would have believed. They come up on the toppled _Hellhound Two_ , inexplicably no more sandswept than when she last saw it. Finn already seems to know his way around the traps she set to keep out other scavengers, and climbs into the side hatch, entering the lower troop deck. When Rey steps through behind him, suddenly the _Hellhound Two_ lurches, it’s prone body righting itself after long years. The lights flicker, as it takes to its feet again, and darkness floods her vision and she reaches out- with her hands, with the Force... _Where is Finn_?

     When the lights come back- the deck is filled with stormtroopers, with a single silver trooper at the front of their ranks, her arm extended. Rey’s response is automatic.

     But then the lights are _actually_ on.

     The real Finn is standing by the lightswitch in their Korsellan room, hesitant to approach. Rey shakes off the dream and looks down at herself, standing on top of her bunk with her lightsaber drawn.

     “Did you just--?” Finn pants.

     Rey disarms and lets her knees crumple, falling to the surface of her bed. “Phasma,” she breathes. Finally, Finn comes to sit with her, tucking an arm around her shoulders. Did Finn see it too? Somehow, she knows he did. “I’m sorry, Finn- I didn’t mean... any of that. I don’t know _how_ I dragged you in- and I would _never_ draw a weapon on you,” she pleads.

     Finn just shushes her. “It’s okay! It’s okay. And believe me, Rey- I jumped out of bed too,” he says, bewildered but understanding.

     Rey shakes her head furiously, ducking her head into her knees and drawing her arms tight around them in a ball. She knows what it’s like to have someone in her mind uninvited and putting things there that didn’t belong, scaring her. “I don’t want to do that to you, I won’t let it happen again,” she promises.

     “I think- maybe you did it before, actually,” Finn says, surprising her. “It got a little tense this time, but-”

     Rey releases her arms and stares at Finn, uncomprehending. “Before? _When_ before?”

     “When we were separated on _The Colloquium_. Before we were found by the _Falcon_ I had a dream you we’re okay. I mean, I wanted so bad to know that you were okay, I figured it was just wishful thinking,” Finn says, waving a dismissive hand. “- but you looked like you did when we found you- with the wraps you picked up on G-9?”

     Now _that_ was something.

     Rey remembers being stuffed between BB-8 and a wall, doing the other half of that wishful thinking. This sounds like-

     “Finn, are we Force-attuned?”

     Finn’s mouth arranges itself into the most incredulous smirk possible. “If you don’t know, I’m not sure how you expect me to.”

     “I think we are!” Rey exclaims, forgetting her earlier horror. This was something else, something sort of wonderful. Something Master Luke said can happen between a Jedi and their padawan, or Force-sensitives with incredible bonds. Rey twists her position so she can sit facing Finn. “Here. Try to sense my mind.”

     She doesn’t try to push it to Finn- she just tries to be open.

     “I’m pretty sure it’s just ‘ _Finn! Hello! Rey to Finn!_ ’,” he says, with a yawn.

     “Fair enough,” Rey laughs.

     “It’d be cool if we were, though,” he says with a sleepy smile.

     Finn gets up from the bunk and turns out the light again, returning to his own now that they’ve settled down. Rey slides back under her covers, mind buzzing with even more questions than when she first went to sleep- still trying to explain what she had seen to herself.

     “I was thinking about home,” she whispers into the dark. Finn hums that he’s still listening. “Home is supposed to be where your family is, isn’t it?”

     “M’not an expert.”

     Rey closes her eyes tight, trying to remember her mother’s face. It was so pale, always masked from the sun, unlike her own. Maybe Finn could see it more clearly. He must have had more opportunities to see her. Rey wonders if it would be too much to ask Finn to think about her, and try to show Rey.

     “I wonder how she’s doing, now,” she admits. “Which is stupid. Really really stupid. She left me _twice_ without wondering how I’d get along.”

Finn laughs. “If you don’t mind me saying so- that’s ‘cause you’re a better person.”

     That may be so. Rey cares and worries in a way she can’t imagine her mother ever doing. She spent the last year learning how, now that she had Finn to think about. After Kylo Ren’s attack he was so close to death, then so hurt for what felt like ages. When he finally woke up it was still a struggle to be properly _alive_.

     “I know how hard it was for you at first, outside of the Order,” she remembers. “And you fell in with a good lot of people. You had the whole Resistance looking out for you, but who does she have?” Rey burrows deeper into her blankets, focusing.

     “I knew her a long time, Rey,” Finn starts. “Phasma is a piece of work. And she’s tough. She never needed anyone to worry after her in the Order, and if I had dropped her in a rancor pit instead of a trash compactor she _still_ would have escaped Starkiller wearing it’s teeth for a hat."

     The face in Rey’s mind gets clearer, filling in with more defined color and contour.

     “Oh,” Rey says, like she’s just ran into a familiar stranger.

     “Reminds me of you, actually,” Finn yawns again. “That’s probably where you got all your... buttkicking from.”

     Rey can see her mother’s face so clearly. “Thank you,” she says, low. “Goodnight, Finn.”

     The bunk creaks as he rolls over. “Sweet dreams, please.”

 

     The next day, Rey and Finn pack up and head off towards the desolate outskirts of the capital with their map of the atmospheric network. There are 437 emitters spread all over the surface of Korsella V, and maybe Rey can’t get _all_ of them- but she can make a dent and put together a report for the struggling Environeer Corps. On foot, they cross the rugged landscape, devoid of plant life and ridged here and there with rocky outcroppings. When they get close enough to the first tower, the red light indicating malfunction glows all around its base and illuminates the parched dirt.

     “Okay...this is.... a _lot_ taller than I was imagining,” Finn says, craning back his neck to look up to the top.

     Rey walks around the base, scanning the surface, then points. “It looks like the service hatch is only four meters up.” It’s just enough to keep the odd passer-by from kriffing around with it, but undoubtedly still accessible to the professional engineering equipment.

     Which they do not have.

     Finn looks uncertain. “Do I have a thing about heights? I think I might have a thing about heights...”

     “Do you wanna _earn_ the Bacca name, or what?” Rey grins, selecting a hand-hold on one of the tower’s ridges and pulling herself up until her feet find a grip too. “Come on slowpoke!”

     “Oh, you wanna go?” Finn says, jumping in place and stretching his arms before he flings himself at the other side of the tower and scrambles up alongside her.

     They heave themselves up to the hatch and pull it open- the way it folds down creates a little tray for their tools. Rey prods her hand into the guts of the emitter, pushing along the moving parts to feel where they catch. Those all seem to be in working order, and not unlike the vaporators she’s familiar with. She feels along the wires that connect the hydro valve to the precipitation program buffer and finds the brittle spot where the short occurred.

     “Here it is,” Rey says, hooking her finger behind it so Finn can get a look. “We’ll need to bypass the short so the buffer can send it’s signal again.”

     When she takes her hand away, Finn reaches in himself, testing the different feels of the healthy wire and the dead spot. “Okay. How do we do that?”

     Rey shows him how since the tensile strength of the wire has been compromised, they can snap it by hand with a bit of effort- but a clipper will give them a quicker, clean cut. Once there’s a fresh loose end, it can be fed into the secondary output and tightened.

     “That wasn’t so difficult,” Finn remarks, shutting the hatch.

     The last time he tried to assist her with a repair had been a fiasco- although she will be the first to admit that the _Millennium Falcon’s_ engineering is about three hundred modifications off from ‘textbook’.

     “Remind me to thank Poe for showing you the right end of hydrospanner,” Rey teases.

     Finn clears his throat emphatically then looks back down at the distance to the ground. “See though- you learn how to tighten a bolt, and the next thing you know you’re being asked to do it in mid air.”

     “Just wait till you get handy with a hex-clamp,” Rey says with a laugh. She lets go of the tower and kicks off against it, arching backwards with a flip and landing delicately on her feet.

     “Showoff!” Finn drops down and lands in a puff of dust. “All right! Now we just have to do that four hundred more times. No sweat.”

     Rey rummages through her pack for a canteen and takes a swig then offers it to Finn. “Ready for the next one?”

     From his pocket, Finn pulls out the map again to identify the closest emitter. He takes a swig from the canteen, caps it and tosses it back to Rey, then immediately takes off at a run. “Eat my dust, slowpoke!”

     Since she loses the first race, Rey sees to the second emitter and Finn takes care of the third. One by one they fix the towers and stand in the pool of white light they shine when no longer malfunctioning. They check off the towers they’ve visited every time they pull up the map, joking about the shapes they could draw out in white dots if someone were looking down from orbit.

     “I think I’ve got the hang of this,” Finn says, patting the base of his fourth emitter proudly.

     “We could split up, if you’re feeling good about it. We’ll cover twice as much ground,” Rey points out. “I think I’ve got the map memorized- you can take it and we’ll each head back to the inn at nightfall.”

     It will be a little lonely without him, but Rey knows Finn is as determined as she is to make a difference for Korsella V.

     “I hate to break up the dream team, Rey- but you’re right,” Finn nods. “We could probably get another ten apiece if we keep up the pace.”

     Rey divvies up the tools in her pack and deliberates about who should take Chewbacca’s transmitter, eventually giving it to Finn. They hug goodbye and set off in opposite directions.

     At her first solo fix, Rey shimmies her way up to the service hatch and lowers the tool tray, setting up for the repair. She clips away the burned out wire and fits it into the secondary port just as before- but when she reaches for her spanner, Rey realizes that she gave Finn _both_ of the ones that would fit.

     “Ugh, of course,” she mutters to herself, checking her pack for a tool that might force the bolt in a pinch. There isn’t anything that will do the job without stripping itself, and she needs to be able to make several more repairs after this one. Rey sighs.

     She _could_ double back and try to catch Finn so she can get his spare, maybe- but he’s pretty quick over distances with his longer legs and soldier’s stamina. Rey sticks her hand back into the hatch and tries to tighten the fitting with her bare fingers.

     “C’mon you piece of-” Rey snarls, twisting it. Maybe it moves a fraction of a turn, but mostly she just skins her fingertips. Undeterred, she lets out all of her breath in one long exhale and gives it another go with her off hand. And then- as if it was dipped in oil, the bolt gives. And _keeps giving_ , she realizes, the Force turning under her unmoving fingers. “Should have thought of that sooner,” Rey laughs, closing the hatch and pushing off of the tower.

     In her defense, it had been a very long morning.

     Several hours later, Rey is the first one back to the inn. She sets about rehydrating some rations so they’ll be ready by the time Finn gets back, and nearly spills fried crispic all over the floor when he bursts in unexpectedly.

     “Stars!” she cries, just catching it.

     Finn shrugs off his pack and kicks off his boots while he catches his breath. “Rey, we had a transmission!”

     Rey whips around to look at him. The transmitter was only equipped to receive from within their sector, and only four or five people have a clue to which that is, as far as Rey knows. All of them were busy not being in this neck of the galaxy, that was for sure.

     “Not the _Falcon_ \- they had a run to Mon Calamari, didn’t they?”

     Finn holds out the transmitter to her in exchange for a plate, so she can check the record for herself. “Yellow One, do you know her?” he asks, hovering close by while she pulls up the data. “Evaan Verlaine.”

     “Oh! I do. She’s great,” Rey says, confirming the call signature. “What’d she say?”

     “She had to shake off an FO tail,” says Finn, around a mouthful of ration. “-but then she was going to drop in tomorrow and regroup before she finished scouting the sector.”

     Rey digs into her own dinner. “It’ll be nice to see a cheerful face. Did you tell her where she can meet us?”

     Finn nods in the affirmative and sits down on his bunk. He puts aside his plate for the moment so he can find and toss Rey the map of the atmospheric network. “It sounded like we should expect Verlaine in the late afternoon- so we can get a bunch more of the emitters fixed up, beforehand.”

     While she eats, Rey ticks off the towers she had visited, and checks their overall progress. There were still 403 towers left, and without _all of them_ online, the artificial precipitation program was useless. At the rate they were going it would take another two weeks to get them up- and that was assuming they found a new base of operations in another hemisphere of the moon at some point- _and_ didn’t manage to contract the plague. On top of that, there was tracking down N’ra Fleetfire to factor in, and the fact that they would probably have to return to the Korbloc and apply for acquisition chips if they stayed more than a week. It’s a tall order, Rey knows, but a worthy one.

     The next day they set out to to continue their torturously slow repair of the remaining towers. Rey takes the transmitter, half hoping to hear from Verlaine early so she can get a break from the tedious repetition of her task. At the foot of her sixth tower of the day, Rey sits down to empty her boots of dirt for the third time. It’s almost worth walking across the terrain barefoot, she thinks.

     Her arms burn from dragging her weight up tower after tower, but she grips her hands into a ridge and climbs to the service hatch yet again. Rey is so bored with the repair at this point, she doesn’t notice that she has performed it entirely with the Force until she realizes she doesn’t have any tools to put away. She’ll have to try it without climbing up next time, she decides while dropping back down to the ground.

     When her feet land, it feels like her heart keeps plummeting without her.

     Rey gasps, choked by a sudden panic. She has no idea why, but she know she should be _worried_. There’s trouble- that’s all she knows. Drawing herself upright, she tries to focus. Rey centers on the voice of the panic, making her mind very still so she can identify it.

 _Finn_ , of course it’s Finn. They’re taking him to the Korbloc and she has to be there, _immediately_.


	3. Chapter 3

     Rey takes off in a flat out run towards the city, harder than she’s run in ages. The waste of land between her and the colony seems to stretch out infinitely as the Jakku desert had in her dream, and it makes her sick to her stomach, like looking down a cliff. Closing her eyes but still running, Rey reaches out with the Force, searching for the danger. Maybe she can head them off before they can throw Finn in the bowels of some prison- she just has to. _She must_.

     When she can sense no way that she ought to adjust her course, Rey determines that she will at least take the most direct path. Arriving at the first edge of buildings, she bounds to the top of a single story and continues racing, rooftop to rooftop toward the Korbloc in the heart of the city. It’s almost like flying- her feet more often airborne than not, as Rey dives through the air across every alley and street, each leap taking her closer to where she is needed. When she drops down in front of the wall of names, she isn’t even out of breath.

     Reminding herself that she is here On A Diplomatic Mission, Rey refrains from brandishing her lightsaber when she enters the Korbloc- though the people inside are plenty alarmed by the way she marches straight down the arcade to the door of Kor Jamric’s office, and waves it open with one hand.

     “What is the meaning of this?” she demands, shutting the door behind herself so they will not be interrupted.

     To his credit, Kor Jamric does not quail. He calmly puts his cup of tea down on the desk, remaining seated. “I was just about to say the same. You were explicitly informed that there would be no Korsellan reception of Resistance forces, and yet an armed X-wing made has made port not two days later,” he says reasonably.

     As they speak, Rey can see through the window behind the Kor that two security ships are tractoring an empty Yellow One into the courtyard like it’s a prize animal for a menagerie.

     “Where are my people?”

     “In detention on charges of terrorism,” the Kor says, matter of fact. “Just what was it your companion was doing out in the wastes with a map of the atmospheric network? Sabotage?”

     It’s everything in Rey to keep her voice even. Now there are two of her friends in trouble. “We’ve been doing the work to _save_ Korsella V that you refuse to do yourself,” she bristles, stepping closer to the desk as the Kor rises to meet her.

     “Tampering with the network without ratification from the-”

     Rey bares her teeth. “Enough! You will bring Finn and the pilot to me,” she commands.

     The Kor wavers, looking funny for a moment, then taps the comm on his desk. “Have Finn and the pilot brought to me,” he repeats.

     “Yessir,” a voice replies.

     Rey regrets tricking him instantly- she shouldn’t be doing anything that could jeopardize the future of Korsella V’s relationship with the Resistance, but getting the three of them executed as terrorists wouldn’t be much of a foundation either.

     Kor Jamric resumes his seat, steepling his hands. “Whatever business you’ve come to Korsella V with is obviously at an end. I will personally appeal to the governing committee to reject all diplomatic motion from the New Republic _and_ the Resistance, and remain independent.”

     “Then there will be nothing but the already half-dead people of this colony between you and the First Order when they come,” Rey warns him, urgently. If the old Imperial airfield goes unused by the Resistance, it will be a tempting possession for the First Order- and _they_ certainly won’t be concerned with the welfare of the people. Massacring the already weak Korsellans would be a very characteristic move on their part.

     “Nonsense, we have nothing they-” Kor Jamric is interrupted by the opening the of door.

     Rey turns around to see two security officers escort Finn and Verlaine into the chamber, while Undersecretary Dae and three official-looking types hover just outside.

     “Thank the Stars you’ve recognized your mistake, Kor Jamric!” Finn huffs, head held high. “Her Royal Majesty and Worshipfulness the Abdicate Princess Evaan Breha Verlaine of the Alderaanian Enclave is _most_ dissatisfied!”

     The gathered Korsellans gasp and mutter to one another behind her while Rey struggles to look as though this is not a surprise. It _did_ make sense of some off-hand remarks and observations that had been made when she first met Verlaine- like the ‘ _you don’t spend a few decades as an elected monarch for nothing_ ’ remark- that was pretty direct, in hindsight. Thank the Stars Finn thought to capitalize on it, since most of Rey’s ideas involved fighting their way out of the colony, empty handed.

     Kor Jamric stands up so quickly that his desk chair nearly topples, and bows low. “Your Worship. I beg you, please! Forgive my security force for not running a biometric scan. I can’t believe-- Remove her restraints at once!” he orders, and the security officers do, quickly.

     “Peace, Kor Jamric,” says Verlaine magnanimously. While he bows again, she winks at Rey. “I would be lenient if only you would have another audience with my friends.”

     Dae and other officials look on, expectantly.

     “Absolutely!” says the Kor, playing right into Finn’s expectations of his sycophancy. “And please your Worship, if you would do me the honor of being my guest? There is a state dinner with the governing committee tomorrow night.” He wrings his hands while Verlaine makes a show of considering his proposal.

     “Very well,” she agrees. “Might I be shown to a room where I could rest? I’ve had quite enough excitement for one day.”

     Kor Jamric nods deeply and Dae steps forward to play host. “This way your Worship,” she says, leading her out and dismissing the security officers as well so that only Rey and Finn remain with the Kor.

     “Now, where did we leave off?” asks Finn, smiling his most manufactured smile at Kor Jamric.

     “Something about re-terraforming the moon?” Rey grins.

     Over the course of the next hour they discuss with the Kor their findings from their survey of the atmospheric network. If the rest of the Environeer Corps were trained in the repair by Rey, they could get the precipitation program up and running in just a few days. Kor Jamric commits to asking the governing committee for an emergency appointment of a new head of the Corps, so that the system doesn’t relapse in a few months time. The colony was lucky only the precipitation buffers had been compromised by the current malfunction- a second short could easily take the carbon buffers offline and make the moon’s air toxic within hours, Rey explains. With the solution to one problem underway, that leaves only the plague standing as a setback in the way of Korsella V’s support of the Resistance.

     “We’re going to meet N’ra Fleetwood and learn what there is to know about Shard,” Finn informs the Kor. “If we can find out why it does what it does, there’s gotta be someone in the Resistance who can figure out the rest of the cure.”

With an uneasy grimace, Kor Jamric turns away from them and stares out the window into the courtyard where Verlaine’s X-wing stands. “I am not comfortable aligning myself with the Resistance in this matter,” he says.

“ _Still_?” spits Finn.

     Kor Jamric turns around. “You have been on Korsella V for three days- _I was born here_. It’s political landscape is not for you to decide.” he says, finitely. “You may both remain as long as Her Majesty is visiting, but that will be the extent of the Resistance presence on this colony until the governing committee has a chance to rule.”

     Rey can’t help but feel that there is no point to the Resistance fighting to preserve the individual cultures of the galaxy if they can’t be allowed to govern in their own way. Verlaine has already agreed to stay at least until tomorrow night and will make her case for the Resistance, Rey knows. If Verlaine is able to buy them time to meet with Fleetfire and get a sample of Shard, they might be able to cure the plague and win over Korsella V, even at a distance. They just have to hope that the First Order doesn’t make a move in the meanwhile.

     “I can appreciate that you want to uphold the dignity of Korsella V’s protocol in these trying times, Kor.” Rey can feel that their dismissal is imminent, and she has no desire to overrule Kor Jamric’s mind a second time.

     “Speaking of which,” he says, holding up a finger. “At the dinner tomorrow- do try to wear something that was intended to be a garment.”

     Rey’s mouth drops open in offense, but Finn finds words faster- “We’re invited?”

     “May as well be,” says the Kor, activating the door out of his chamber. “Or else I have the feeling you’ll just invite yourselves.”

     Rey and Finn do their best to bid the Kor goodnight without any further diplomatic failings and hurry back out through the arcade, smiling politely at Undersecretary Dae when they pass her post.

     “Kor Jamric must be the only person on the moon who _doesn’t_ want the Resistance to cure the plague,” Finn mutters to Rey. “And I’m sorry he was rude about your cape. It’s very...”

     “A market stall?” Rey sighs, looking down at herself. Poe did try to tell her.

     Finn covers a snort. “I was raised in the Order, I can’t really judge.”

     “I know,” Rey says fondly as they exit the building. Outside of the Korbloc she stops and throws her arms around Finn. She had been so scared for him when she felt him calling out in the Force. “I’m really glad you’re all right, by the way. That was brilliant, what you did with Verlaine.”

     “What can I say?” Finn laughs, squeezing tight. “Getting the hang of this diplomat thing.”

     Rey steps back and nods her head in the direction of the inn. “Come on, Representative of the Resistance Finnbacca. There’s a heap of rations with your name on it.”

 

     The next day Rey and Finn meet with the two workers remaining at the Environeer Corps outpost in the wastes so that they can train for the repair of the atmospheric emitters. As Rey suspected, they do have a hovercraft meant for accessing the towers, but the engineers are all so nauseous from their illness she wouldn’t advise them to operate heavy machinery if the fate of their colony didn’t depend on it. The engineer they had interviewed a few days before is not among them, presumably still nursing his family- but his coworkers praise him none the less for sending help their way. When they depart from the outpost, Rey and Finn resolve to corner Kor Jamric at dinner later that night while he’s busy trying to impress Verlaine.

     Back at the inn, Rey rummages through her pack for a pair of pants without any dirt on them. “We’d better get washed up for tonight,” she says, wiping a smudge off her face with her sleeve.

     “Are you gonna change?” Finn teases, tugging on a corner of her makeshift cape.

     Rey fixes him with a withering look. “If anything I was hoping to find a bunk sheet to wear as a turban.” She finds what she was looking for and excuses herself to the ‘fresher.

     At dinner, Rey is impressed by the turn out. Twenty committee members are in attendance, dressed in their best and scrubbed clean despite their obvious malady. Unfortunately, even Verlaine is a little under the weather, though she is radiant in a nothing more sophisticated than a clean work shirt and a tasteful necklace. They all watch as Kor Jambric grovels to Verlaine, who seems content to let him wear himself out trying to earn a compliment.

     “And how do you find the traladon?” he asks during the first course.

     Verlaine raises an amused eyebrow. “Is _that_ what this is?”

     Next to Rey, Finn lifts the small plate off of the larger platter it was delivered on, checking underneath it. “I thought they were going to feed us. This is a _bite_ ,” he whispers to her.

     “Rich people are weird about food,” she shrugs back. “Did you try the wine?”

     Finn’s eyes go wide and he grabs his goblet to wash down the traladon morsel. “I like this better than Corellian, whatever it is.”

     Rey takes an experimental sip of her own. She doesn’t have much frame of reference as she never had the credits to buy any liquid but water on Jakku. Other than that- someone once gave her a shot of shui rum the night of Starkiller (which she spit out, it was so bitter), and Master Luke favored a strange fermented bean mead that was best forgotten. Whatever this is- it is _delicious_.

     While a palette cleanser is being served between the first and second course, Rey hears someone mention how windy their district is lately.

     “Sir, it might interest you to know the Environeer Corps are making headway with atmospheric stabilization,” she butts in, dropping her fork. This is the opportunity they’ve been looking for in the conversation, so she devotes all of her attention to it.

     “Is that so?”

     “Rey figured out how to repair the network,” Finn adds, smiling proudly at her. “The engineers should have the precipitation buffers back online in a week.”

     Several of the committee members mumble approving noises, their weary heads perking up in interest. “Do you mean to say the drought will... end?” asks a bearded gentleman.

     Ready to lay it on thick, Rey turns to the Kor. “Yes, and it’s all down to the wisdom of Kor Jamric! Of course, until there is a new head of the Environeer Corps appointed to direct further maintenance, there _is_ a risk of the system shorting out again very soon, so the Kor has promised to meet with the engineers at the outpost _tomorrow_ and listen to their input.”

     Verlaine follows Rey’s lead, clapping her hands together in approval. “How proactive of you Kor Jamric. I for one look forward to hearing what he learns from the engineers,” she says, turning to one of the committee members. “-dont you?”

     The bearded committee member nods eagerly and raises his glass in toast. “To Kor Jamric!”

     Everyone at the table raises their glass as well, then drains it- which Rey was not expecting. She and Finn glance at each other halfway through but continue gulping, not want to appear disrespectful. A server comes around to fill everyone’s glass again- probably because once the Korsellans get going with their libations, they don’t stop.

     “To Her Majesty!”

     “To Kor Sedan- _may he rest in peace_!”

     There’s even a round “To the Baccas!” before things come around to Kor Jamric again sometime during a curry dish.

     “To Kor Jamric!” one of the committee members hiccups.

     Rey can’t help herself, and cheers on. “We could use a leader like him in the Resistance!” she calls out. Everyone, even the Kor himself, bellows their mirth and drinks to that.

     Her head is so pleasantly floaty from all the drink that Rey gets ambitious with the final course. She spoons a heap of it to her mouth but is entirely put off by the taste. “Force, that’s spicy,” she swears, reaching for more wine to dull the burn. Seeing that, Finn doesn’t even touch his dish.

     Verlaine digs right in, one spoonful after another, with a chug of water in between. “Nothing's too spicy when you’ve been married to a Sullustan as long as I have,” she laughs. Rey just crosses her utensils over her plate and pushes it away to be cleared, unfinished.

     At the end of the meal, the bearded committee members pulls out her chair in a display of gentility. This is extremely fortunate because when Rey takes to her feet again, someone has tampered with the gravitational settings and she couldn’t have navigated her chair alone. Her brain sloshes around in her skull for several moments until Finn grabs her arm and it pulls her into focus.

     “Ohhh. Oh I am very drunk,” he mutters. Rey just nods sloppily and lets him escort her out in a four legged stumble.

     It’s a wonder that they make it back to the inn without faceplanting in the middle of the street. Rey is working on a theory that Master Luke selects his bean mead specifically for its terrible taste- that way he won’t be prone to overindulging. Finn agrees, or- she thinks he agrees. They’re both slurring their words pretty heinously and her attention keeps drifting.

     “Thissss why Poe cuts me off.” Finn is clutching his head to keep it still. “Don’t know...”

     “What don’t you know?”

     “ _Tolerance_. Do. Not. Know. It,” he says, punctuating each word with a swipe of the access chip at the door of their room. It finally opens and they topple in, clinging to every stick of furniture for stability along the way. “M’gonna be sick,” Finn warns, pushing past her and diving into the ‘fresher.

     Rey flops onto her bunk and the room starts spinning again. She can hear Finn retching. “You... you good in there?”

     Finn just moans in response, but she’s seen him in much worse condition so Rey peels herself out of bed and goes to offer moral support. “I’ll camp out with you,” she says, dropping two pillows on the ‘fresher floor.

     “Never gonna drink... with a desert girl again,” Finn swears, curling up with a pillow. Rey rubs his back, thinking that there is something to be said for growing up perpetually dehydrated. She makes sure they both get some water before they pass out.

     Finn’s chrono beeps to wake them up in the morning.

     “Shhh,” he grumbles. “Hungover.”

     The ‘fresher floor is not soft. Voices are not soft. The light, which they left on overnight- is not soft. Rey’s mouth is tangy and dried out, and her head is pounding.

     “Are we dying, Finn?” she croaks. They didn’t even catch the plague, but they are dying. “Tell BB-8 I love her.”

     A very weak laugh. “That’s the opposite of my feelings toward BB-8, most hangovers.”

     Rey pushes up on to her elbows. Through the ‘fresher door she can see their packs and store of rations. And she is so hungry.

     And they are so far.

     Summoning the will to move, Rey gets up for just long enough to grab two or three bundles of rations and crawls back onto the floor, propping herself up against a wall. “Come on, Finn. We’ve got a few hours to pull ourselves together before we see Fleetfire,” she says, tossing some food to Finn. It skitters across the tiles and he mournfully slaps out a hand to grab it.

     Once they’re fed, Rey and Finn get ambitious enough to haul themselves off the ‘fresher floor and get an hour or two of actual sleep in their bunks before it’s time to track down Fleetfire.

     The fresh air and long walk on the way between their inn and the market helps to clear their heads by the time they lay eyes on her rusted old tanker. _The Wellspring_ is similar in size to most freighters of the L19 class, but it’s port and starboard cargo sections had been dismantled and replaced with giant reservoirs for liquid transport. While the specialization of the storage space was ingenious, Rey can’t help but think that the L19 engines are inadequate for hauling that kind of mass effectively at sublight speeds. Planet hopping in _The Wellspring_ must be wretched.

     A line of colonist wraps around the city bloc with three crew members at the front, verifying idents and collecting money before doling out one Shard per person. Rey and Finn join the back of the line.

     “I wish BB-8 was here,” Finn says when they’re three fourths of the way up the line a standard hour later. He heaves a sigh and shifts his weight from foot to foot and then finally rests his elbow on Rey’s shoulder like a shelf. “She would have played charades with me.”

     Rey squints at Finn. She had been surprised to find out that what was a life skill on Jakku was a beloved pastime on board the _Millennium Falcon_ , but for some childish reason she had thought Chewbacca invented the game. It does occur to her to wonder how under the Stars and Skies does Finn play with a limbless droid he can’t understand- but she doesn’t pick him up on it. “Who says I won’t play charades with you?” Rey smiles.

     Finn jumps. “Really? I call first!” he beams, shaking out his hands and rolling his neck before he gets down to business. “Okay,” he says, setting the stage. He holds out one hand in front of himself, flat with all the fingers tucked together, palm up. A surface. With his other hand he rubs his chin in contemplation of it, then mimes picking up and putting down a small object on the surface.

     “Counting? No- jumping?” Rey guesses. But that’s wrong. “You would just _jump_. Oh! Jumping a piece on a board- Dejarik?”

     “Yes!” Finn punches the air in victory.

     Rey shakes herself loose and begins her turn. She throws her hip out to the side and plants a hand on it, trying to convey curvaceousness. Finn looks puzzled, which is fine, because that’s only half of it. With her other hand she pats her head, calling attention to it, then waves her hand down from it, indicating a flow.

     “Hair?”

     Shaking her head furiously, Rey mimes the wave from her head again, then swaps her hands and does the same gesture on the other side, too.

     “Hair _all over_?” Finn guesses. “Chewbacca??”

     “What?! No!” Rey laughs.

     Finn grunts a disqualifying beep. “No talking!”

     “A Twi’lek? Like- the lekku?” says Rey, frantically gesturing the twin appendages indicative of the race again.

     “That would be really good if I had ever seen one? I need to get out more,” Finn grins. They move up the line a bit while he takes a moment to consider his next play, then he smirks at Rey and brings his clenched fists together, one over the other- moving together.

     “Mopping?” Rey squints. “Sweeping!”

     With the most incredulous look, Finn drops his hands and mouths a silent ‘ _Are you kidding me?_ ’ before resuming his act. His hands are more still this time, instead, he moves with an emphasis on footwork.

     “Are you piloting something with a stick column?”

     Finn sighs and gives up. “Uhm, a lightsaber? Ever heard of it?”

     Rey smacks her hand to her forehead, embarrassed. “Tell no one.” She has a reputation to uphold.

     Finn laughs so hard he doubles over.

     “All right this is a quick one, I think...” Rey says, ready to act out her best impression. Without a moment of pause for the ridiculousness of it, she drops to the ground and gathers her knees tight to her chest with her arms, smiling as big and brightly up at Finn as her face will allow, then lets her weight rock about.

     “Aww, BB-8! You showed up anyway!” Finn coos, petting her head. Then Rey accidentally rolls over and directly into a stranger’s shins. It gives realism to the performance, of course, but Rey jumps to her feet on the receiving end of the most disdainful look she’s been the focus of in a while- and she’s been meeting with Kor Jamric.

     “Excuse me!” Rey says apologetically, turning back to Finn to share a goofy frown. “Oh, we’re next,” she notices, grabbing his arm and dragging them to the front of the line.

     By reputation they know N’ra Fleetfire is not among the motley group interfacing with the public. Fleetfire is a distinguished business woman while these three members of her crew are outfitted with mixed and matched bits of armor from a number of worlds, marking them as lowly scavengers. Between them, there are some prized Mandalorian pieces, some Katarn, a repainted stormtrooper breastplate- one even has a repurposed battle droid chassis made into pauldron. Each of _The Wellspring’s_ crew wears some manner of goggle and headdress to protect them from the dry, dusty air of Korsella V, obscuring their faces. It makes Rey miss her old mask, actually- the hands free lightsource affixed to it came in handy more often than she realized.

     “Well?” says the smallest, scrappy looking crewman. Their foot taps on the ground impatiently. “What’ll it be? Water, spice, Shard, or-”

     “Shard, please,” says Finn, hefting the bag of credits Zarro had given him. “And we’ll pay you double it’s price _each_ if you can get Fleetfire to deliver it herself.”

     “We accept,” says the tallest one in the repainted armor, quickly- though the other two crew seem put-out that they weren’t consulted.

The bearded crew member with the droid pauldron speaks up first, skeptical. “N’ra doesn’t have _time_ for this.”

     The tall crewman simply turns on their heel and marches into _The Wellspring_ to retrieve Fleetfire. Rey eyes the two that remain as they start to bicker. Snatches of their argument catch her ear.

     “...big brute just wants the money...”

     “...don’t know _why_ N’ra hired...”

     “...it was better when it was just the three of us...”

     Then Fleetfire herself descends from the ramp of _The Wellspring_ with the tall crewman following close behind her much shorter figure. Clad in rich red robes with splashes of yellow to match her name, Fleetfire draws close to Rey and Finn, a piece of Shard held in her gloved hand.

     “You little ones want to be more careful about flashing your credits. There’s a plague on, you know,” she says with a one cornered smile. “Makes people _desperate_.” Fleetfire dips her head at this dark statement, a curtain of golden hair casts a shadow over her face.

     Rey stands her ground. “That’s why we wanted to meet the savior of Korsella V’s desperate people,” she says, then sticks out her hand. “Rey and Finn.”

     “N’ra Fleetfire. Charmed.” When Finn also reaches out to shake, Fleetfire relieves him of his purse and tosses it over her shoulder to the tall crew member. “Show more initiative boys,” she hollers to the other two grumbling crew.

     The piece of Shard is dropped into Rey’s hand, and before Fleetfire can turn away she quickly continues. “If you have any idea why the treatment helps, the Resistance could use the information to develop a cure,” Rey says. “There could be an even greater reward in that.”

     Fleetfire’s face drops for a moment, but she quickly recovers. “Oh really, like what?”

Finn turns to Rey with an imploring look. They don’t have _that_ many credits.

     “ _You’re_ the business mind,” Rey shrugs. She tries to reach out to Fleetfire, feeling what she wants, and sensing a sudden, sharp alarm. “Whatever you can work out with the high command. _Protection_ , maybe? Or exclusive importation rights to a new market. The water trade here is going to dry up soon.”

     Fleetfire narrows her eyes. “You can’t know that.”

     “We can. We came here to investigate it, we already solved it- and now we’re gonna solve the next problem,” Finn says confidently, refusing to be cowed by Fleetfire’s patronizing tone. “With or without your help, there’s not gonna be a need for plague meds soon. You may as well benefit by it.”

     With a nod to her crew, Fleetfire just scoffs. “That’s all for today folks,” she calls out to the rest of the people in line. “We’re out of stock!”

     “You have another whole crate right there,” Rey points out, thrown by the sudden brush-off. her fist clenches around the Shard in her hand.

     Fleetfire laughs and turns back to her ship, calling over her shoulder. “Thanks for the spare change, little ones.”

     The crowd behind them starts to clamor forward, dismayed by the announcement. People grapple at them, struggling to get close and find out if it's true there will be no more Shard today. The people pushing in all around them make it impossible to try and follow the crew as they swiftly pack up shop and disappear into their ship to leave. The Korsellans cry out in distress when _The Wellspring_ finally lifts off.

     “Okay,” Finns calls out to Rey, squished a few people away. “That wasn’t what I was expecting.” He wrestles toward her and they make their way out with a few well placed elbows.

     There was something very, very wrong with all of this. The crew of _The Wellspring_ looked more like mercenaries than merchants, and the way she had felt Fleetfire’s defenses rise so suddenly...It was all wrong, and whatever mischief the crew were up to- now she had tipped them off.

     “We have to follow them,” Rey says, already searching the area for a craft that might be able to keep up with _The Wellspring_.

     “I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing!”

     Rey grabs Finn’s shoulder. “That was not you. She started shutting down as soon as I brought up the Resistance.”

     “Who doesn’t like the Resistance?” Finn asks, whipping around to look with her, though he’s clearly not sure what for. “-besides the obvious, I mean.”

     “I wish we had hired a speeder...”

     He lights up. “Rey, we’re around the corner from the Korbloc. Verlaine could take her X-wing!”

     “Let’s go!” Rey takes off down the street with Finn hot on her heels, past the wall of names and around the corner into the door. They barrel through the arcade, skidding to a stop in front of Undersecretary Dae’s desk.

     “We need to see Verlaine!” they shout in unison, spooking any employees who hadn’t already scattered when they burst into the building.

     Dae scrambles up from her desk immediately, her face drawn in worry. “Her Majesty took ill last night,” she gulps. “I’m afraid it’s the plague!”

     A chill runs up Rey’s spine. Verlaine had been so kind to her- inspiring even. She didn’t deserve this. Rey and Finn had been on Korsella V for days, just fine- then Verlaine drops out of the sky and contracts the plague immediately? What had been different? She had even been the special guest of the Kor, under the protection of the government! Now their only ally on the colony was unable to assist them, unless-

     The door of Kor Jamric’s office opens as a worker exits with a bundle of datapads for other Korbloc employees. Through the window overlooking the courtyard, Rey sees the yellow painted X-wing standing at the ready.

     “Finn, you take this and apologize for me,” she says, pressing the Shard she’s been clutching since the market into his hands. “I have to take the X-wing and follow Fleetfire, immediately.”

     Finn nods, clapping her on the shoulder. “Good luck, Rey.”

     As Rey makes her way across the arcade, she hears the Undersecretary offer her help to Finn. “ _Anything_ I can do. Is it true what you said about the Resistance...”

     Rey storms through the Kor’s empty office and uses the Force to swing open the heavy glass doors of the courtyard ahead of herself. As she runs, her heels clack over the stone paving, matching the percussion of her heart. She’s wanted to fly an X-wing since she was a child- but not at the cost of its pilot’s health. Her hands grip into the hull and Rey hoists herself up on a wing, throwing open the canopy and dropping into the cockpit. She’s studied this interface, of course, and identifies the switches that need throwing. Behind her, Verlaine’s astromech whirrs to life, beeping it’s surprise.

     “Yeah, Eftoo- remember me? Verlaine’s in trouble,” Rey calls back to it. “ _Everyone_ is in trouble.”

     The droid beeps it’s worry, but doesn’t stop her from finally powering up the X-wing and pulling back the steering column to take off and up- up and out of the courtyard. Rey knows the general direction _The Wellspring_ had taken off in- it had stayed low, that’s for certain. She speeds over the low built city, toward the wastes. If it was going out of orbit from the moon, Rey would have noticed by its heading. It _must_ be somewhere on the moon, but unfortunately that means its wake would be indistinguishable from any other ship in the area. She flips the X-wing’s targeting computer from tracking energy signatures to the thermovision used for organic targets.

     Eftoo flips her back over to energy signatures.

     “No!” Rey cries, switching it back. “The only thing differentiating _The Wellspring_ from other ships is all the water it’s tanking. It’ll have a lower heat reading than anything else.”

     With a flurry of objecting hoots, Eftoo calculates how miniscule a lead that is.

     “Fine! Then I’ll work it out myself,” says Rey. “Drop all of Yellow One’s presettings, disengage, and just _let me fly_!”

     It’s enough of a lead for someone who can augment a flimsy computer report with the Force, it turns out.

     Some hundred kilometers out into the wastes, Rey sees the unique form of the tanker making its descent by a long abandoned quarry. The site must be left over from the salt mines that used to be the feature of Korsella V until ore was discovered and it was decided to terraform the moon, several generations ago.

     Rey pulls behind a nearby ridge to avoid detection, and puts down the X-wing. “If I’m not back in an hour, hail Finn on the transmitter,” she tells Eftoo, hopping out of the cockpit again so she can creep up the ridge for a better view.

     From her position, she watches two of the crew exit _The Wellspring_ and enter a small drab structure by the mine. When the others don’t follow immediately, Rey figures she may as well approach- if worst comes to worst, she’d rather have them divided anyway. She races across the terrain between her ridge and the structure, praying it doesn’t come to that while she’s out in the open. Or before she can get Finn back by her side.

     She reaches the structure without being seen and sneaks around its perimeter to a loading bay on the opposite side from where the two crew members had entered. There’s a wall of untidily stacked crates like the ones they had been selling Shard out of, earlier. Rey crouches behind them when she hears voices. It’s the two grumbling members of Fleetfire’s crew from before, continuing their tirade about the most recent hire. They resolve to approach their captain, no longer willing to put up with new addition. Rey peeks around a crate to get a look just as N’ra Fleetfire joins them.

     The bearded one with the droid armor pushes the smaller crew member forward to speak with her. They mumble something half inaudible about how they don’t think the tall crew member is ‘a good fit’.

     “What do you mean?” Fleetfire says. “Speak up.”

     “How can we be _sure_ it’s a good idea to bring her in on the Shard con?”

 _The con?_ Rey blinks.

     Fleetfire holds up her chin confidently, unmoved by their apprehensions. “She’s the one who called off the First Order’s price on my head and put me on their payroll instead so I could even employ _you_ scoundrels,” she growls, then looks directly at the pile of crates where Rey is hiding. “Not that Shard’s going to matter much longer- if that girl was right about the drought ending- Korsella V will be back on its own water and the contaminants will flush out in a week or two.”

     Rey’s stomach twists. She’d been reading the hostility to the Resistance right, but it was much more serious than the typical smuggler’s disdain for organized government. As soon as Fleetfire’s attention turns away from the crates again, Rey bolts back out the loading bay door and runs blindly until she nearly falls straight into the quarry pit in her haste. She stops short at the edge, breathing hard and peering down into the hole lined with the same cloudy crystals that were being passed off as an exotic remedy, back in town. Rey huffs and kicks a bit of rubble in anger. The desperate colonists were being gouged for their money to boil a good for nothing piece of-

     And then it all slots together in Rey’s mind. She and Finn didn’t have rights to the heavily rationed water supply of the colony- they had been living off of the jugs Chewbacca had given them when they first landed. Meanwhile, the sick Korsellans with Shard were being directed to _boil_ their water- the water they were importing due to drought. _The water with the ‘contaminates that will flush out in a week’!_ The people with ‘treatment’ were merely reducing their exposure to the poison by purifying their water. No wonder everyone was still some degree of sickly. Fleetfire must been hired by the First Order to keep the colony from affiliating with the Resistance, and looked at the drought opportunistically- a way to breed crisis and keep the Korsellans weak so they couldn’t participate on the galactic stage.

     Still trying to catch her breath, Rey looks up at the horizon, where several more red lights shine at the top of malfunctioning atmospheric emitters. The people of this world were suffering so needlessly, all because of an electrical problem.

     And she can stop it.

     Rey reaches out her mind, focusing on one of the lights. She lets the Force help her wrap her around the circuitry inside like fingers. She already knows the repair- it’s just like that last tower she fixed without tools before she felt Finn’s alarm and had to leave. If they could reach each other over such distances- why shouldn’t she be able to heal the tower now?

     Rey closes her eyes and works her imagination through the repair- and when she looks up again, the light is white.

     She draws in the deepest breath her lungs will sustain and stretches out her arms like she’s summoning the attention of the rest of the towers. The Force wraps through her mind and body and she can feel it pushing out. Rey thinks of the map of the atmospheric network she had so closely studied, directing the energy to every emitter. Every last emitter needed to be operating again for the program to run.

 _Remove the short, re-port the connection, tighten_ , she repeats to herself, over and over again until she feels a change in the air.

     The sky above her is swirling when she looks up. The humidity gathers, becoming clouds that bounce back the white lights of all the repaired towers. The clouds thicken and darken, heavy and pent up, rolling and moving to fill every corner of the atmosphere. As soon as they blanket the sky, it opens up and rains.

     Large, meaty drops of water roll down Rey’s face like they had on D’Qar. She smiles into the wet, catching some on her tongue.

     “That oughtta slow you down,” Rey laughs at _The Wellspring_. She takes one last long breath before picking up her feet again, running back to the X-wing. When she hops in the cockpit, Eftoo attempts to give her a weather update. “Is it _really_? I hadn’t noticed.”

     Yellow One powers up and takes off again, and Rey zooms across the wastes of Korsella V, trying to decide what to do first. She needs to tell everyone what’s been going on, and she needs someone to help her do it. Kor Jamric should still be meeting with the Environeer Corps at their outpost, which she’ll come up on before reaching Finn in the city. Rallying the Kor would speed things along with the colony at large. He may be a pompous, bureaucratic fool- but he’d see that something had to be be done. Then they could get together with Finn and anyone else ready to bring Fleetfire’s crew to justice.

     Eftoo asks if it ought to transmit their location to-

     “Shh, whatever, Eff. I need to think.”

     Rey lands near the Environeer outpost, the excited engineers running out to meet her as she leaps out of the cockpit again. Whether they heard the X-wings engines or not, they are only just noticing the rain. They hug each other and lift their hands up to the sky, cheering.

     “Did _you_ do this, Rey?” asks one. “How!?”

     She pulls away from their excited clamor. “I need to see the Kor, is he still here?”

     “He’s inside, he’s going to put together a proposal to completely renovate the network,” says the other, beginning to choke up a bit.

     Rey excuses herself and heads into the building, crammed full of spare parts of the towers that dot the moon. Inside, the Kor is bent low, inspecting a table covered in rods that Rey recognizes as light beacon finials.

     “Kor Jamric! Sir,” Rey pants, unsure where exactly to begin. “I followed Fleetfire back to her den and- she’s been poisoning the colony with the imported water, so she can half cure it by telling people to boil the Shard!”

     The Kor does not jump or show any surprise at this outburst of information. He straightens up leisurely, brushing some dust off his sleeve. Rey stares at him, stuck still in her wonder.

     “You already knew that,” she realizes. That was why he drank tea and wasn’t interested in curing the plague. He knew it wouldn’t last long. “How did you know?” she demands. “How could you _allow this_? The suffering of your own people!”

     “They could have suffered much worse,” he says, a thin smile cracking his face. The Kor steps toward her, and paces in circles around her, his tone light and dispassionate. “Kor Sedan was weak, easily influenced by the leaders of larger worlds. He would have let us align with the Resistance- so we could end up like the Hosnian system.”

     The darkness of Kor’s deeds is palpable, Rey barely has to reach out and read him to know the truth. He stops, standing between Rey and the door with his hands folded behind his back.

     “Kor Sedan didn’t die of the plague did he?”

     Rey doesn’t really need to ask. She can sense that while he circled her, he slipped one of the rods from the table into his hand. It’s no surprise to her when he swings up and brings it down to blow. Kor Jamric however, is _very_ surprised that she just as suddenly ignites her lightsaber and slices the rod a nanometer from his hands. Rey jumps up and kicks him square in the chest with both feet, landing by his shoulder once he’s splayed out on the floor. With the point of her lightsaber in his face, he sputters.

     “Is this the position of power you imagined for yourself?” Rey bites.

     The engineers who had been hovering by the door for a few moments now speak up. “We’ll see that he’s arrested,” one promises, as they come closer.

     “You’ve done enough here- you have to go tell the people what’s happened,” says the other. He finds a length of wire on the table, ready to bind the Kor’s hands.

     Rey steps away and thanks them earnestly, powering down her lightsaber and rushing to the door and outside of the outpost just as a clap of thunder sounds.

     In the rain standing between her and the X-wing is _The Wellspring_. The lights on its bow illuminate the rain, making it look like it’s reaching out towards Rey. Its ramp lowers and its four crew members descend, blasters drawn.

     “Well hello, little one,” N’ra Fleetfire calls out through the rain. “I wondered who was parked next to Kor Jamric’s speeder. Thanks, you saved us a trip.”

     In a flash, Rey has her lightsaber at the ready, which spooks most of the crew. Rey was of the opinion that having so few Jedi in the galaxy was bad for their order, but it did allow for her to unexpectedly pull the mother of all trump cards at times like these. She charges forward into the attack as they fire off wildly. The two more established crewmen are lousy shots, but fearless. They duck her reflected blasts, which she is still a bit too inexperienced to redirect with consistent success. Fleetfire edges around her, trying to make her way into the outpost building, where they unarmed engineers are busy with the Kor. The tall, newest crew member follows Fleetfire, but does not take shots at Rey.

     It would be so much easier if she could just _run_ , but Rey carries on, absorbing their attack and bouncing it back at best she can, defending the door. The rain keeps pouring around them, amplifying the sound of Rey’s blade and deafening heto much of the battle. Instead of hearing a speeder engine, the first sign she sees of it is light splashing up the side of _The Wellspring_ , blinding one of her attackers.

     Finn jumps out over the nose of the craft and punches the scrappy crew member in the face and takes their dropped weapon.

     “Eftoo said you were rude!” he shouts through the rain. “We’re supposed to be awesome diplomats, remember?” He hurries towards Rey, coming to get her back while they contend with the other three.

     Rey grins, her nerve restored by Finn’s presence. “I think the situation has gotten beyond diplomacy,” she replies.

     When he lifts the blaster, Finn winces at the mud caked to it. “I _assume_ you made it rain, so I’m blaming this on you. What’s the plan here?”

     “There’s innocent people inside and Fleetfire’s feeling a little bloodthirsty,” Rey calls over her shoulder.

     “The Kor?”

     Rey can’t help but laugh. “He is _not_ innocent- but he should stand trial. He sold out the health of his people in exchange for power.”

     “Good enough for me,” says Finn. He wings Fleetfire and she staggers back to lick her wounds.

     Two security officers from the Korbloc and Undersecretary Dae spill out from the speeder Finn arrived in. One of the officers is picked off instantly and Dae ducks behind the speeder for cover, clearly not having expected combat.

     Rey and Finn concentrate their attack on the the tall crew member wearing the repainted stormtrooper armor, while the second Korsellan officer cuts around behind the X-wing and runs up behind her, wrestling her around the neck and attempting to bring her down. The officer rips off the goggles and wrap that mask her face and then is thrown clear.

     Rey heads off a fresh attack from the scrappy crewmember Finn had knocked out, armed with a spare blaster someone must have thrown. She notices Finn has stopped blasting, behind her.

     “Rey, uhm.”

     She reels around, and he follows the switch in position seamlessly, resuming the attack. Her eyes fall on the furious, uncovered face of the tall crew member- then dart out to the officer, recovering his weapon and taking aim. Without thinking, Rey bolts between them.

     “You can’t!” she cries, stepping in front of her mother. “She hasn’t killed anyone here.”

     The officer, still laying in the mud on his belly, lowers his weapon. He’s unwilling to blast through Rey to make his target- but Fleetfire isn’t. She dives on him for his blaster and wins it in the scuffle, then readies a shot at Rey.

     An arm lowers over Rey’s shoulder from behind, squaring it’s weapon on Fleetfire. With the blast, N’ra Fleetfire goes down for good. Breathless, Rey whips around, lightsaber raised in defense.

     Rey faces Sheev Phasma for the second time in her adult life. The rain continues to fall, disguising any tears she might have shed. Phasma has already lowered her blaster, and her arms hang limp at her side. As focused as she is on the state of her mother, Rey barely notices how the engineers have come out from their cover inside of the building, and help Finn bind the other crew members, who have finally been disarmed.

     When she tries to compare Phasma to the image she’s been carrying around in her head, she is filled with pity. Rey notices now, how short Phasma has cut her hair. Deprived of her status armor from the First Order, she has shelled herself in a parody of her former glory. The bits of recycled stormtrooper armor she wears now are cracked over in a cheap metallic coating. It makes her look aimless, Rey thinks. How lost Rey felt without parents in her early life is how lost Phasma looks now.

     “You can’t want this,” Rey says, shaking her head and extinguishing her blade. “Hawking bogus diseases and then curing them on backwater moons.” She doesn’t have the metric to decide if Phasma is inherently Good or Bad, but she’s certainly got to be better than that.

     “I don’t know...how to want anything. Or what to want,” Phasma chokes, rain streaming down her furrowed brow.

     Rey lifts her hands, hesitating. She had no qualms about putting herself in the line of fire for Phasma, but reaching across the distance to take her hands is infinitely more terrifying. Rey reaches out to hold to hands that once, long ago- before Korsella V, or the Jedi, or Jakku- were the first hands that ever held _her_.

     “Want _me_ ,” Rey pleads, swallowing down the instinct to sob. She stares up at the watery eyes of the woman who gave up on her- and refuses to do the same. _Please want me_ , she thinks, without pushing. _Want to be my mother._

     Phasma says nothing- but she doesn’t pull her hands away, and for now, that’s enough.

 

     It takes a few days for Verlaine to be healthy enough for travel, and Rey and Finn agree they want to see her through. Besides, it gives them the opportunity to attend the swearing in of the new minister of the colony, Kor Dae... and the feast that follows.

     “We barely survived the last one.”

     “Very crucial part of this ‘diplomat’ business, Finn,” Rey says. She tries to shrug, but isn’t able to pull it off, too physically devoted to dressing her hair in a fashion that will survive the third rainstorm since the precipitation buffers came back online. They seem to be making up for lost time.

     Finn hums in agreement. “Well at least no one will be toasting Jamric twice. We might stand a chance at leaving the party without clinging to the walls.”

     The soon-to-be Kor Dae is pledging full support to the Resistance thanks to the discussion she had with Finn while Rey chased after _The Wellspring_. Given the opportunity at the feast, Rey isn't sure she’ll be able to stop herself from celebrating that fact thoroughly. She finishes her hair and turns around to check that Finn is set to go. He’s his usual ready-for-anything self, but with more recently laundered clothes, now that the drought is over. Rey pokes him in the shoulder, on the badge sewn into his jacket.

     “Did General Organa threaten you with a rank when you got in touch?” Rey teases. That’d be another thing to celebrate. Rey may have made some rash decisions on this mission- most recently, inviting a First Order captain back to the Resistance base- but Finn had been exemplary.

     “We’re _both_ going to have to find some room on our shirts,” Finn assures her.

     Thorough she appears to be in perfect health at the feast that night, the next morning Verlaine turns up that their door, complaining of a headache.

     “Maybe you could fly Yellow One home, and I’ll take your place on the Korsellan delegation shuttle,” she suggests.

     Rey squints at Verlaine, checking to see if her face exhibits any of the tell-tale signs of a hangover. “You’re fine, aren’t you?” she asks suspiciously.

     “Nothing gets past you, does it,” Verlaine winks.

     Piloting the X-wing home is the greatest reward for her troubles Rey could have dreamed of. It’s worth putting up with Eftoo’s crotchety recalibrations, and maybe even worth being exiled from the Resistance when the General gets a load of the guest she’s bringing back. Finn keeps saying it won’t happen, but- prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

     Rey has never taken a craft out of orbit alone before, but when she coordinates the jump to hyperspace with the shuttle, the other pilot defers to her calculations and she floods with pride. They punch it and streak through the galaxy and there’s _nothing at all_ but Rey and her wings. It’s nearly as consuming as giving herself over to Force so that she might use it as a tool. It’s easy to see how some starfighter pilots can get to be so full of themselves if they get to feel this way all the time.

     “I take it back, Eftoo- you’re all right,” Rey laughs, when they drop back into realspace safely. The droid chirps back at her. “Thanks.”

     Below them, D’Qar grows in size as they approach. They swing around the planet to the opposite hemisphere and hail the base as friendlies, receiving directions for the appropriate dock. They happen to arrive back to the base on a sunny day- which Rey has to admit is a bit of a relief. She switches to inter-orbital speeds with a sigh and lands as instructed.

     After doing one last lap around the base.

     ....and maybe a few rolls and dives.

     The shuttle has already disembarked by the time she jumps down from her cockpit. She can see Poe wrap Finn in a mighty hug while General Organa confers with Verlaine and is introduced to the Korsellan delegate. His arm must have fully healed while they were off-world, because the next thing Rey knows, Poe is hauling Finn over to her and crossing his arms furiously, his eyes flashing.

     “How dare you, Rey!” Poe growls. Finn crosses his arms too, and nods sharply. Rey stops breathing. “You are _forcing_ me to fistfight an old woman so that I can get you on _my_ squadron,” he finishes.

     Rey gasps out a laugh. “Oh Force, I almost passed out.”

     “I saw that Dosmit’s Dive. That’s an oldie- don’t know where you would have picked that up,” Poe grins.

     Rey hops on him for hug. “I’ll tell you later,” she promises. When she pulls back, she notes the new stripe on his uniform. “But, _General_ \- I have someone else I need to catch up with first.”

     Finn grabs her next, before she has a chance to peel away. “I know you know I’m not... _thrilled_. But. I also know this is good for you,” he says with a small smile. “You gotta try.”

     Rey wells up a little bit. Somehow, without the benefit of belonging to a family, or being a son or daughter, the two of them had managed to claim each other as brother and sister. If that was all she came away with at the end of this experiment with Phasma- it would be okay. She screws up her face into smile, pushing back happy tears.

     “I’ll do it or I won’t do it. You know what they say about ‘try’,” Rey sniffs.

     “You’ve got this,” Finn says simply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  [art by me! stitchyarts on tumblr ](http://stitchyarts.tumblr.com/tagged/star%20wars)   
> 


	4. Epilogue

 

-

 

Leia closes the channel between herself and Finn, having just received his triumphant report from the Korbloc of Korsella V. She recalibrates the subspace frequency, picking a new relay point for her next contact and scrambles the origin. It wouldn’t do to reveal either her or her brother’s position just to make a courtesy call.

Luke answers quickly and the console in front of her fills with his flickering blue image. Compared to the last time they spoke like this, he seems more unkempt- but that’s to be expected while he’s away from the planet he had made his home for a decade, following the trail of her son.

“Leia, you look well,” he says warmly.

“Luke, you look like you could use a comb,” she smiles back, before continuing. “I’ve just heard from your apprentice. Rey and Finn did well with their mission, saved a world, rounded up some support for the Resistance, all that-”   
  
“They grow up fast,” Luke nods.

“Well, if they want to keep up with the pace  _ we  _ set at their age...” Leaning back in her seat, Leia meant the comparison to be lighthearted, but she nearly tips the chair backward when she sees a shadowy expression pass over Luke’s face. She catches herself, toppling a stack of holos as she grabs the edge of the console. “What is it?”

“If they keep pace, they will soon encounter a path through the Dark that may never lead back to the Light.”

 

-

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the next fic, picking up with the return to base, from Phasma's POV :D
> 
> Beta'ed by StarMaple, my partner in crime!  
> PSA: Betas are great! If you don't have one when you write, solicit one on your blog! If you don't write/aren't too busy writing at the moment, offer to beta for others! It makes a good community and great fic :)


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